Tag: NASCAR

Women Are Flying the Planes: What we have learned about the pilot who crashed the plane in Toronto

It’s not that women can’t fly airplanes.  I’m sure many can fly better than men.  But like the joke that women can’t drive cars, the assumption comes from somewhere, and it’s for a reason.  Men and women are different and have different priorities in how they live life.  Remember the experiment when NASCAR tried to make a driver out of Danica Patrick to satisfy some woke perception about the world?  She was a good driver, but there is a reason that more women aren’t in NASCAR.  There is a reason that girls play with Barbie dolls and boys play with cars and army men.  They are wired differently, and Danica never cracked into the championship column for sustained periods.  These days, she is an excellent conservative podcaster.  But even though NASCAR tried to make her into a star by following some ridiculous woke agenda, it was never successful. And she didn’t create a glass ceiling in NASCAR where suddenly there were a bunch of women driving in the sport.  We don’t have women quarterbacks for similar reasons.  The NFL has tried to find a role for women in the rough and tumble-NFL for all the wrong reasons.  But it has never worked out, and fans of football would never put up with it, including many women.  The attempts on most employment frontiers to defy biology and insist that there was no difference between men and women regarding social roles have been a disaster, and people aren’t happy with it.  So why would Delta make a decision to staff one of their airline divisions with mostly, if not all, women?  What evidence do they have that such a thing would work under any conditions? 

We should always seek to hire the best people for our positions, especially positions as important as flying airplanes.  We want pilots flying planes who have wanted to be pilots since they were fetuses, not going from an Easy Bake Oven and buying dresses for prom to flying people around in airplanes if you can provide a choice for yourself. Now we know from people close to the situation that the Delta pilot who crashed the plane in Toronto was Kendal Swanson, a 26-year-old without much experience.  Delta has been reluctant to release the names of the crew in that plane that day when a hard landing in Toronto busted the landing gear, shearing off a wing and sending the airplane over on its back in a flaming mess.  Luckily, nobody on the flight was killed.  They had a rough ride, but they made it to Toronto anyway, which says a lot about the planes’ safety.  The flight, operated by Endeavor Air (a Delta subsidiary), flipped upside down during a landing attempt at Toronto Pearson International Airport amid snowy conditions and strong winds. All 80 people on board survived, with 21 injured. Social media and some news outlets have linked the 26-year-old pilot named Kendal Swanson to the incident, alleging she was the first officer (co-pilot) to fly the plane. She reportedly joined Endeavor Air in January 2024, completed training in April, and received her Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) certification on January 9, 2025. Claims suggest she had around 1,500 flight hours—meeting the federal minimum for an ATP—but her relative inexperience has sparked debate, with some speculating she struggled with the challenging landing conditions.  Delta and Endeavor have not officially confirmed her identity or role. Delta has stated that the pilots were experienced, with the captain hired in 2007 and the first officer exceeding federal flight experience requirements. The captain, said to be named James Henneman, was reportedly handling communications while the first officer flew the aircraft, though this remains unverified by the airline. Delta has also pushed back against what it calls “false and misleading” social media claims, insisting both pilots were fully qualified and that no training failures occurred.

So here we have a case where Delta, as an airline, got caught trying to put a square peg in a round hole and create job fulfillment for people who should not be flying people around due to her lack of experience.  The passengers were made to do a social experiment to fulfill some DEI worldview, which made that flight much more dangerous than it needed to be.  They dug in and denied the reports when they were caught, hoping they could contain the story.  But the flying public needs to know how many pilots are out there who are just like this young girl, Kendal Swanson.  It’s not just because Kendal is a woman. This has been a problem worldwide, and airlines are trying to make pilots out of people who have not spent all their lives as pilots.  In the United States, we have had a good military program where post-retirement pilots could make a pretty good living flying for airlines after they spent decades flying planes in the military.  And countries that don’t have the kind of military that we do struggle to find pilots for their airlines because they don’t have cultures that produce many pilots.  They go from Uber drivers to airline pilots because manufacturers try to make the planes as easy to fly as possible.  So, it’s hard enough to satisfy the market need under optimal conditions.  Putting 26-year-old girls in the cockpit to tell the world that the employer hired females becomes a big problem.  And that Endeavor Airlines themselves were seeking to hire women over men because they wanted it to be known that they were putting women in planes purely over gender politics. 

I always tell people that airplane pilots are the best examples of stress management.  When flying in a plane and bouncing around in turbulence, you don’t want a panicky pilot who shows panic on the intercom.  You want an incredible, calm voice even when the world is burning around you.  And that level of stress management comes from experience.  Inexperienced people panic, and as passengers on airplanes, we never want to hear panic in the voice of the person flying us around.  We like when we leave the plane to see an older man sitting in the seat that looks like he has landed on aircraft carriers in bumpy seas thousands of times.  Not a kid that looks like they are in a hurry to cash in a Target gift card.  And crashes like this, even though Delta has tried to cover it up, come when we lower the standards of employment to satisfy some ridiculous DEI political movement.  The result is many of the crashes of airplanes that we have been seeing, and they are happening now because, under Joe Biden, DEI was a priority.  They were undoubtedly mistakes, but now that there is pressure from an economy wanting to thrive under Trump, people are flying and doing things again.  The airlines weren’t prepared for it, and they are putting people like Kendal Swanson in the cockpits of their planes when, in truth, she probably needs another ten years of hard flying to qualify to fly other passengers.  And that hiring policy is blowing up in their face, and they tried to hide it. 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Flooding the Zone: They tried to destroy America, but now the shoe is on the other foot

It’s not because anybody told him to, as critics of President Trump’s furious pace of work are trying to say.  They keep referring to a 2019 statement made by Steve Bannon about flooding the zone with muzzle fire velocity as motivation for Trump to work at such a furious rate.  But what Bannon and other political strategists had been saying was evident as we were uncovering a massive amount of corruption that was looting itself off a government that was supposed to be run by the people of America.  But instead, it was taken over by thousands of cuts, all rooted in predatory lending meant to exploit us all for all they could and to sucker us to our doom.  What needed to be done was evident, and even back in the last decade, many of us, I was undoubtedly one of them, were saying what had to happen, and that was to flood the zone with action that needed to happen quickly, not at a pace of government that was controlled by the people causing all the problems.  The looting of our government was caused by the slow pace of action that our leadership structure could recognize, so was part of the scam.  And as we watched the worst of it, the Covid lockdowns and the election fraud, which was essentially a coup by the fourth branch of unelected government that had no right to exist, we knew what needed to be done if only we’d get another crack at it.  When Trump left the White House in January of 2021, things looked pretty bad, even unrecoverable.  And the newly installed Biden administration was rubbing our noses in it with crazy picks for his administration, sex in public buildings, and the disgrace of the Biden laptop.  Clearly, those hostile to America as a nation, Democrats especially, were cheerleading our destruction, and they were hiding their villainy behind the pace of change that would prevent anybody from stopping them.

Trump and all of us have had four years to think about what should have been done differently in that first term.  We learned who the suckers were in the Republican Party and began to primary them out of existence. But many thought it was too late.  I never did, but I always hoped that things would improve.  Some people think my optimism is a weakness, that I don’t live in reality.  Because, for them, reality is determined by the skill level of the participants.  If you have a bunch of losers trying to change a tire on a car, they will probably do a lousy job of it and even injure themselves.  But if it’s a NASCAR pit crew, changing a tire is not a big deal at all.  They will do it quickly, not hurt themselves with the tire iron, and probably still have time to eat a sandwich.  One thing was clear to me during all this, the world was being run by incompetent fools who would be easy to beat, if only we could Save America long enough to put Trump back in the White House for a second term.  So many thousands of us worked every day to make that happen if only Trump could survive the actual tyranny of a government completely out of control and drunk on power.  If Trump could survive the lawfare, the attempted assassinations, and a hostile global media that did everything it could to keep him in exile, then we just might have a chance.  “Might” is the operative word.  We were going through a period that the history of the world had never seen, so nobody knew what to expect. 

And I would tell people, even three years ago, when Trump is back in office, he’s going to flood the zone to undo all these anti-American actions draped over Washington D.C. and protected by a snail’s crawl of action by corrupt losers like Mitch McConnell.  Trump would have to flood the zone with action, where every day, things were happening that most presidential administrations would have considered to be the most significant things in their presidency.  Trump was going to have that kind of approach every day.  And people would laugh at me and giggle behind my back as if I were some crazy old man yearning for the good ol’ days as the world built highways around him.  Trump committed himself to the cause; if the people of America hadn’t re-elected him, he would be in jail by many of these same criminal government types for the rest of his life, and his family would have had all their future wealth stolen from them and given to the parasites of the world looking for a free handout using the government as the robber of wealth redistribution.  We all hoped that we could restore Trump to his proper place in the White House, and he dug in his heels and took on all comers like a great prizefighter, which is what we were looking for in a President.  He didn’t disappoint us.  I am very proud of Trump.  And I am very proud of the people who had the guts to cast a vote for him and to stand up against some of the worst people ever to show themselves to the human race.  I am proud of America for showing the world the light forward and for surviving this last decade or two, even going back to the George Bush days, and Clinton, and especially the parasitic socialist Barack Obama, the kid from Indonesia who openly tried to destroy America the way Islamic terrorists have plotted and schemed for many years.  We survived, and now it’s our turn to run the world. 

The plan was to destroy America, and many were hostile to our existence, so Trump, in his opening days upon returning to the White House, had to act quickly to flood the zone with action to undo all that had been applied.  So, of course, Trump has signed more than 50 executive orders in his opening weeks to stop the purposeful bleeding that had been going on, and he will continue to do so at a breakneck pace because it was the only thing that was going to save our country.  You only get one chance at this thing, so we must make it count.  We saw the teeth of the enemy, so there is no return to polite society to cohabitate with them, only to facilitate our doom.  It’s not that anybody told Trump what to do as a strategist.  We all knew what had to be done.  We just needed someone with the guts to do it and to have his back during the process, which is where we are now.  Obama used to say that if he couldn’t get Congress to work with him, he had a pen and a phone and would use it to bypass the legislative process. And we have seen that they meant an end to all of us.  So now that the shoe is on the other foot, we have to keep the ball and undo all they tried to implement and restore our country to what it was before all these Marxists of the world put a target on it for destruction.  That means flooding the zone with activity at a furious pace as soon as anything can be done and never looking back.  We have this one chance, and we have to make it count! 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Ideas are Scary: The important task of being a place that lets them grow

By far my favorite commercial of 2014/2015 is the one below from GE about how ideas can sometimes be scary featuring a little alien looking ET creature being born and ridiculed until GE opened its doors to the innovative prospects of the fledgling creature. It’s a very honest commercial for such a huge corporate giant and it tells me that at least in practice GE hasn’t lost its way in understanding where it came from and what role it plays in America’s future. Growing up in Cincinnati it is impossible to not have GE a major part of my life and whenever I have to travel downtown and drive by the Evendale plant there is a little happy place that keys off in the back of my mind knowing to what a great extent GE has advanced technology and really lived up to the aspects of the commercial on innovation.

Being a corporate giant isn’t easy, and I am often distrustful of them to stay nimble in the field of innovation simply because there comes too much pageantry and fluff just to keep rules and regulations off their back to maintain the kind of forward thinking that made them great in the first place. Jeffrey Immelt after Barrack Obama was elected was put into a very difficult position. Here was a president openly hostile to corporations and business that would see GE as a massive target for socialist implementation. As a CEO it is first the job of such a person to guide their corporation through the potential threats that exist so that those gates of innovation can stay open for such fledging ideas shown in the commercial. So Immelt did what he thought was best, he made a partner out of Obama running the president’s Jobs Council for a few years. In so doing he was able to exploit the lack of financial understanding of the barely concealed socialist by enacting 54 of the 60 recommendations made by the Council—such as fast tracking key infrastructure projects and selling more leases for both oil and gas production. But in the end, only 4 of those recommendations were completed as is typical of government which loses focus quickly as life in the Belt Way quickly kills off ideas like an African hunter on the Serengeti. Under the auspices of government ideas quickly become extinct—and Jeffrey Immelt’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness was one of the first things that Obama hung on his trophy wall. Obama tried to use GE to stimulate his economy, and largely took Immelt’s advice without knowing anything else to do—but failed to nurture those ideas into fruition

http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2013/01/31/the-one-job-jeff-immelt-might-be-happy-to-lose/

For the last 20 years the GE90 engines from GE have been a game changer in commercial aviation. It is largely because of this engine that oversea travel has been on the increase just because now airlines can perform such a task with such a powerful engine without massive fuel consumption. That engine is exactly what the metaphorical commercial about GE innovation was all about. It was one of the great leaps of innovation from American culture that could have only come from such a large corporation that embraces such invention. And to make the GE90 work, it took a lot of the best minds at the time in the field of aerospace to pull it off.

There is a new generation of engines coming to serve for the next two decades, so the GE90 today is something of a Payton Manning in aviation. It’s still a great engine, but it has set the bar very high and newer, younger players are entering the market to break those previous records—but it took the pace setter first to show everyone what the innovation looked like. While some may look at the GE commercial in respect to Immelt’s work with President Obama and cry foul, I have a tremendous amount of respect for those open doors which allow scary little creatures like new ideas a place to go. I wish there were a thousand GEs in America—and I believe there is plenty of room for all of them—but unfortunately for most, they end up in the trophy case of some politician’s game wall—hunted, killed, and stuffed for memory.

I don’t watch much television so I didn’t see the GE commercial until I was watching the start of NASCAR last weekend. I love NASCAR because of the innovations—the new MAC tools, the tires, the corporate sponsors. I love seeing a pit crew in action trying to troubleshoot a problem in record time to get their driver back on the track as quickly as possible. There are a lot of ideas born on those tracks which end up in the cars we drive, so I love to just watch NASCAR for a glimpse into the future. It was in looking for innovations that I actually saw the GE commercial.

Recently I had one of the worst days of my life where everything that could go wrong did and there was just a mess of activity that had to be cleaned up from more of those idea killing vermin. So to brighten my day, my wife went to McDonald’s and picked up a couple of Big Mac meals so I could watch the news while enjoying that wonderful idea from McDonald’s ancient past—which I still think is one of the greatest inventions ever created. Big Macs would be an impossibility to the typical hunter and gatherer in New Guinea or Africa—yet out of the mind of Ray Kroc came a company called McDonald’s that made quality fast food easy and affordable on the go—the Big Mac was created. When I have a really bad day-one of those days where it’s difficult to breathe from one moment to the next, I typically get a Big Mac and just like that—I’m good to go. My worries and concerns evaporate. It’s not just the taste of the burger that drives my interest, it’s the story of McDonald’s itself that does. It reminds me of what innovation is supposed to look like. As rapidly as McDonald’s makes Big Macs it is astonishing that they always come out well, cooked perfectly, possessing just the right amount of lettuce, onions and sauce, and can be done so quickly. To this very day if I buy a Big Mac in Florida, it will be made nearly to the same specifications as one that I might buy in Wisconsin. They are little miracles—now taken for granted like the GE90 jet engine—but they have changed the way the world interacts with each other—and each one of those ideas is beautiful.

So I have a major soft spot for the GE commercial with the little alien idea being born to the voice over about ideas being scary. Ideas are the natural-born enemy of the way things are. They are ridiculed and mocked, and are often hunted by members of the political class for sport. When Immelt joined Obama’s Job’s Council, the move to me was to protect all the ideas brewing at GE from the hunters of the political class who want to destroy those wonderful creatures before they can bloom into beautiful creatures. That’s what a CEO should do, and if that sometimes means drawing fire away from those they are trying to protect—then so be it. Because as the commercial says, “under the proper care, [ideas] become something beautiful. They do.

The task of a massive corporation like GE is to create an environment where ideas can grow. Not everyone within that culture embodies such a spirit, of course, but in general, the philosophy of the company must seek to strive for such creation. If it does, then it will bring into the world ideas that would otherwise be destroyed by humanity always speculative, and short-sighted. It was a bold commercial from a company that really didn’t need to push the limits of perception—yet they did. They didn’t have to ruffle any feathers, yet they did—and for that I deeply appreciate the commercial. It is good to see that GE is not playing it so safe in the public relations market—and that they are remembering who and what they are—and how they got where they are today. Ideas are beautiful—even when they look scary to the un-enterprising and clandestine political hunters. It is good to be the natural-born enemy to the way things are. That is the spirit of innovation—and the direct benefit is humanity and its offspring.

Rich Hoffman

CLIIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

 

A Supercar that runs on Vegetable Oil: THE GREATEST CAR CHASE IN HISTORY!

The second edit for my new book Tail of the Dragon is well on its way. As we speak my editor is plugging away at the daunting task of delivering it back to me for a final edit near the start of the New Year and from there a 2012 release date will be forthcoming. I know a lot of my readers here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom are interested in this very cryptic project of mine that has been three years in the making now. While I can’t give away specific details I can provide the tentative marketing summary that I prepared for my publisher as we enter into this next phase and begin to contemplate marketing necessities for the books release which you can see below.

________________________________________________________

THE GREATEST CAR CHASE IN AMERICAN HISTORY BEGINS WITH A RACE FOR THE WHITE HOUSE.

A highly rebellious loner whose NASCAR dreams have fallen short finds himself the victim of a governor’s plans to run for President of the United States. Wellington Royce, governor of Tennessee is seeking the support of the Fraternal Order of Police to catapult him into the White House by adding more officers to the highways around The Great Smoky Mountains and to pay for them with increased citations on the tourists who visit. Thrown in jail, abused, and set-up, Rick Stevens in a fit of rage accepts an offer to declare war on the highway patrol by the governors political enemies using $20 million dollars to build the car of his dreams in a plan to wreak havoc in what becomes the greatest car chase in history. The chase emerges as a journey of self-discovery, deep contemplation and new-found romance as an impenetrable gauntlet of guns, missiles and the might of the military sits at the finish line and the treachery of politics proves to be more sinister than even death.

_______________________________________________________

Tail of the Dragon is an intensely layered novel that intricately combines the struggles of emotional growth with breakneck action and imminent danger with peril at virtually every mile of this illustrious car chase. What makes this particular story unique is that the chase is actually instigated and is politically motivated by the protagonist. People who have read the early manuscript say the beginning is reminiscent of the film First Blood while the ending is 100X the chase at the end of The Road Warrior. The lead character knowing what to expect builds a car specifically designed to out-run, out-wit, and out-maneuver anything the police or military can throw at him. This includes the latest in composite armor technology of course, but the two most unique attributes to this mystery car that is built for this epic car chase are elements that I am particularly passionate about.

When purposely planning to flee from police officers during a high-speed chase the first problem that must be solved is refueling, the Highway Patrol will naturally be sure to shut down all petrol stations within many miles of a fleeing vehicle. That is why the main character in my novel decides to use an alternative fuel for his high performance supercar, something that he can get independent of heavily guarded fuel stops where snipers from helicopters can shoot him dead as soon as he attempts to refuel. The police to prevent further injuries and risk to civilians will naturally attempt to force a car fleeing from officers to simply run out of gas so they can capture the driver when they attempt to escape on foot as the last option. That is when the main character plans to utilize the technology shown in the video below.

Yes, that’s right. The fuel for the supercar in this epic car chase is vegetable oil, which can be found at virtually any restaurant. So in theory our hero plans to refuel his car when he runs out of gas by backing up to a McDonalds and dumping their used oil into his car. And no, the police are not happy about it…..not in the least.

The other big development is in the engine, which is a highly specialized Peugeot diesel engine from France that puts out close to 700 HP. The engine has to be a diesel engine because in order to run a car on vegetable oil the power plant must be a diesel. Now most people think diesel engines are built for trucks. Not so. Have a look at this Audi from Germany and what they’ve been able to do with a diesel engine.

That gives you an idea of what kind of power, and quickness we’re talking about with the super car featured in Tail of the Dragon. When planning to outrun everything the police have available, and the aircraft that the military has to offer a car would need to accelerate from zero to 100 in less than 7 to 10 seconds and would need a top speed of over 200 M.P.H. because many police departments have their own supercars for such high-speed pursuits. But you could not have a fuel source that the police could control but something that existed on the open market in great abundance, like vegetable oil.

In modern America where there are fast food restaurants at nearly every highway exit ramp, vegetable oil is just the thing for a fuel supply. Getting over 700 HP out of an engine that runs on vegetable oil is a bit tricky, but Peugeot has solved the problem by producing a diesel racing engine for Le Mans events so the technology for all my thoughts about the supercar featured in Tail of the Dragon can become a reality. (FOR MORE INFO ON TAIL OF THE DRAGON AND THE WORLD IT’S ABOUT CHECK OUT THE LINKS BELOW FOR MORE HINTS) The first link has a video introduction about the book by me as well as other videos that show how politics and racing have gone together with each other for a long time.

Public Announcement of Contract Signing

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/07/03/the-real-america-thinking-of-the-fourth-of-july-from-the-beach/

The Speed Culture of the South and Why it’s Important

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/11/06/docs-law-in-ohio-boogity-boogity-boogity-amen/

Pictures and Video from the actual road Tail of the Dragon, where the novel takes place

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/tail-of-the-dragon-coming-soon-to-a-bookstore-near-you-action-philosophy-romance-and-a-celebration-of-americans-roots/

My first article upon completion of the manuscript

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/my-new-book-the-tail-of-the-dragon/

What does nearly 200 M.P.H look like? An update from the publication hunt

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/25/speed-update-on-the-tail-of-the-dragon/

Why are Pirates important to the pursuit of FREEDOM!

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/pirates-freedom-and-key-west-whats-more-important-order-or-happiness/

Why the Confederate Battle Flag should be remembered

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/12/05/the-confederate-battle-flag-all-the-reasons-why-you-should-love-it/

A government out-of-control: the senators who voted for NDAA

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/throw-every-senator-who-voted-for-s-1867-ndaa-out-of-office-rule-by-fools/

Just like in the golden age of piracy in the Caribbean where the ships needed to be much faster than the ships they were robbing, my editor pointed out to me a few weeks ago that Tail of the Dragon is a modern pirate story and the car in the story was like a modern pirate ship. That was an aspect I hadn’t considered, since I simply wanted to resurrect the good old car chase stories of the 70’s like Crazy Larry and Dirty Mary, Bonnie and Clyde, Smokey and the Bandit, Vantage Point and many others. But in this story the protagonists actually picks a fight with the law, on purpose and for political reasons which conjured up in her mind a pirate story. That was completely unintentional on my behalf, but was simply a byproduct of my interests which any writer is vulnerable to. For the blank page that sits before a writer will soak up the mind of those who fill it, and my mind has a lot bouncing around in it, as anyone who reads here often will know. So yes, my love of pirate lore found its way into my epic novel! It was unavoidable!

The benefit however is that we have a car in this story that is unlike anything ever created for literature or a film. Take every trick car in a James Bond film and you might have something comparable to the pirate car in this story, and that is exciting. I waited for years for somebody else to do a story like this, but they never did, so I accepted the task to put my dreams on paper! I look forward to the day in the very near future where I can share all this great stuff with a larger audience and reveal finally the details of an epic American tale that not only looks to be culturally significant given our current government problems, but will help paint an artistic picture of what the world will look like under the rule of a police state, similar to what the senate just passed with the NDAA act. Such things only three years ago seemed like science fiction to many when I first put pen to paper in the mountains of Tennessee and began the journey that has become Tail of the Dragon. Because the government is growing at an alarming rate, and is becoming more and more intrusive it can be a lot of fun to follow the exploits of a man who looks at this encroachment and decides to go pirate. But it takes more than just a pirate to tell such a story because in every great tale of adventure, plunder, and revenge there is a pirate ship, and Tail of the Dragon certainly has one, so much so that in the words of my editor, “the car is one of the strongest characters.”

Mission accomplished!

SEE THE WORLD THROUGH HOFFMAN LENSES:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/socialists-live-hoffman-lenses-on-urban-meyer/

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

The Real America: Thinking of the Fourth of July from the beach!

Ocean waves are the perfect metaphor for how corrupt politics erodes away at our freedom. I had spent much of the night at our condo working on an editorial assignment for my new book Tail of the Dragon, which is a about a rip-roaring car chase through the heart of the south at speeds over 200 mph. It combines two of my passions, politics and fast cars.  Without sleep, I was up at the crack of dawn summing up my latest writing project. 

When I think of politics and racing together I think of a moment around this time of year in 1984 where President Reagan flew into Daytona Speedway, which is just an hour north of our condo, to witness the race and see Richard Petty win his 200th victory.

When people ask me what Tail of the Dragon is about, it’s hard to explain in modern terms because for me, even though I was a young guy, the book was born on the day when the two people I admired most back then were both having big days at the same time. This race, the Firecracker 400 with the iconic Ronald Reagan speaking in his usual way and Richard Petty winning with a cliffhanger solidified in me what America is all about.

Whenever I feel the need to get back in touch with what America is, in a modern sense, I think of this race when I was a young man staring at a static laced television set in a sweaty un air-conditioned house waiting for family to come over to my parents house to set off fireworks and grill hamburgers on the grill.

When I finally got my own drivers license I drove so fast that I earned the nickname Richard Petty, and other NASCAR names. One of my first jobs out of high school was a car salesman, which gave me access to the fastest cars built at the time. When I wasn’t selling cars to customers, I was taking cars out for lunch and test driving how fast I could make them go. Richard Petty to me always represented what winning was supposed to look like, and his casual attitude represented the best of what America had been and could always be.

So as we celebrate the 4th of July, the Founding Fathers are the first thing that should come to mind. But for me, memories of a more recent past percolate to the surface. And as I walked the beach this morning and looked north up the coast to where the Daytona Speedway waits for the famous Fourth of July race, which they call the Coke Zero 400 these days, I see the spirit of America alive and well.

When I finish the Tail of the Dragon, I hope to share that spirit with the rest of the nation so they can relearn everything that they’ve forgotten about American Pride, and as you can see from this clip compared to the exchange between Reagan and Petty, America as forgotten a lot.

My goodness………????????????????????????????????????????????????

We have a long way to go.  The waves of corruption have been beating on our shores for a while now leaving us with hungry, patriotic yearnings for a president like Reagan.  The first step is in realizing that the erosion has taken place, then we have to figure out what to do about it.  Because left alone, the waves will continue to beat on us till there is nothing left but a sandy beach where once brilliant ideas existed and courage was commonplace.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com