Tag: overmanwarrior

‘Once Upon a Time in the West’: Hidden truths in a declining culture as time does fly

Little things matter to me quite a lot.  I notice everything and of my many careers over a lifetime, one of them will be a cultural expert where psychology, art, religion, economics and all other forms of unnamed human ambition find their way into every created thing on earth.  I grew up for as long as I can remember wanting to be a film director—but not being a very collaborative person—relegated that desire for more inward pursuits.  Because of all that I can say with great provocation that the world is in a severe cultural decline.  America obviously leads the world in culture—even though many academics might dispute it.  The evidence is in our movie houses and our music with great audacious display.  So rather than slide my predilections into the direction of the current pendulum swinging culture of global unification I am focusing much more these days on American westerns as a foundation philosophy that stands in contrast to the world currently presented to us.

I was born in 1968 and a few months after my birth one of the greatest films ever made was released—it was a Sergio Leone western called Once Upon a Time in the West.  Leone was an Italian director interpreting American westerns for a country trying to fight its way back from cultural decay after World War II.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. Leone at the time was best known for his “Dollars” trilogy which made Clint Eastwood into a star.  Those films are and have always been fantastic.  But for the director Leone they gained him the opportunity to make the western of his dreams off the success of the previous Eastwood films.  Paramount Pictures tossed the world to him along with a host of first class stars and Sergio Leone along with his musical collaborator Ennio Morricone spun a masterpiece called Once Upon a Time in the West.

Some of my very first television memories were these spaghetti westerns by Sergio Leone replaying on Channel 19 in Cincinnati.  My grandfather loved westerns and whenever I was at his farm-house he had them on, so my mother also watched them all the time as well because it reminded her of her dad.  Of them the Sergio Leone westerns reflected my own observations about people even when I was very young—and I soaked them up.  Before I was ever in the kindergarten I was a fan of Once Upon a Time in the West.  I often confused all Leone’s westerns together until I was just shy of ten and it was then when I began to appreciate Once Upon a Time in the West as something of its own.  The Leone films had hard-wired themselves into my consciousness.  My very first time in front of a television camera was when I was sixteen during “tough guy” week on Channel 19.  “Tough guy week” was a ratings grab at Channel 19 so they ran Steve McQueen movies along with a lot of Clint Eastwood to bump up their winter numbers.  At a young age I had evolved into having a “reputation” and I was sitting at the dinner table of a prominent Sharonville judge, his wife and the biggest criminal of Northern Cincinnati at the time.  The event was a Chinese New Year advertisement for a restaurant that I worked at.  One of the owner’s sons was a guy who liked to dip his feet into that type of world where justice sits at dinner tables with known criminals and he used me even at that young age as one of his “heavies.”  I enjoyed the experience because I was essentially living the life of the protagonists in Sergio Leone’s westerns and I discovered by living those characters in real life that one of my favorite film directors was in fact a genius.  As I sat at that table during that day long commercial recording talking to the judge and the crime lord obviously working together with me in the middle and being told by that same judge that when I got into trouble—he’d take care of it–I knew for me there was no going back.  At too young of an age I knew way too much about the way the world worked.  I was then and still am about 60 years ahead of myself and it does really go back to Leone’s westerns and my young introduction to them.  When the commercial aired on television my family was one of the first people back then to have a VCR so I was able to tape it.  My television appearance aired with the judge and the criminal seated on either side of me during a showing of For a Few Dollars More.  During that same Channel 19 “tough guy” week Once Upon a Time in the West was shown again and I was able to see it as a 16-year-old actually doing in real life much of what the Charles Bronson character was doing in that film and I watched it with new understanding for the first time.  It was as real and honest of any motion picture I had ever seen—it was to my eyes much better than The Godfather which was still making cultural waves in that year of 1985.  A month later I was involved in a fight with a bunch of people which led to a tragic situation and if I had not been sitting at that table with that judge on that particular day for that commercial, I’d probably have a much different life than I do now and my freedoms would likely be greatly restricted.

I felt it was important for my wife to be to watch Once Upon a Time in the West to understand more about me, so I tried to show it to her early in our relationship.  At the time she was a country club girl so she wasn’t ready for movies like that—where the opening was so strange and dramatic.  She made fun of it heavily after the first seven minutes and I never tried again to show it to her until January of 2016.  I had meant to show the movie to my children at some point so given all my history with it I felt that they should see the movie.  I bought the cut of the film that had been restored to 165 minutes as opposed to the version I had seen as a kid, the 145 minute version which was a bit more confusing, and relished being able to finally show it to my wife and at least some of my kids.  It was a great experience.  The music from Ennio Morricone was so good in that movie that I have used it often to raise my mind above times of incredible stress.  Even though my wife didn’t like Once Upon a Time in the West at first I still loved it and thought of it often to carry me through tough times.  I was 25-years old and in deep trouble.  I had more legal problems and had law suits directed at me from several directions and I had to tap into that raw, primal civility that I had refined when I was 16, where I could walk into any situation and just take care of things no matter how bad the guys on the other side of the table were—or who hid in the shadows where you parked your car.  I had for the first time a CD collection of Ennio Morricone’s music which featured a scene on the front from Once Upon a Time in the West.  By the 1990s the film was considered an obscure classic and nobody remembered it much except for filmmakers and people who were particularly fascinated with cultural phenomenon.  In the hardest days of my life I listened to the music from Once Upon a Time in the West to serve as my moral compass—and it has always worked for me. I sat in my office back then with the world coming down around me and would listen to those Morricone soundtracks and think of “The Man with the Harmonica”—that haunting melody which spoke of revenge, perseverance, and the growth of a human into an Übermensch (German for “Overman, Overhuman, Above-Human, Superman, Superhuman, Ultraman, Ultrahuman, Beyond-Man”; German pronunciation: [ˈˀyːbɐmɛnʃ]) As readers here know I think a lot of the concept which is from the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. In his 1883 book Thus Spoke Zarathustra (German: Also Sprach Zarathustra), Nietzsche has his character Zarathustra posit the Übermensch as a goal for humanity to set for itself. It is a work of philosophical allegory, with a structural similarity to the Gathas of Zoroaster/Zarathustra.  I learned later that my love of Sergio Leone had more to do with the concept of the Übermensch than of the westerns themselves—but I can say that there is an honesty in Once Upon a Time in the West that is not present in any other form of art and it should be experienced—especially these days.

Once Upon a Time in the West (Italian: C’era una volta il West) is a 1968 epic Spaghetti Western Technicolor film in Techniscope directed by Sergio Leone. It stars Henry Fonda cast against type as the villain, Charles Bronson as his nemesis, Claudia Cardinale as a newly widowed homesteader, and Jason Robards as a bandit. The screenplay was written by Sergio Donati and Leone, from a story by Dario Argento, Bernardo Bertolucci and Leone. The widescreen cinematography was by Tonino Delli Colli, and the acclaimed film score was by Ennio Morricone.

After directing The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Leone decided to retire from Westerns and desired to produce his film based on The Hoods, which eventually becameOnce Upon a Time in America. However, Leone accepted an offer from Paramount Pictures to provide access to Henry Fonda and to use a budget to produce another Western film. He recruited Bertolucci and Argento to devise the plot of the film in 1966, researching other Western films in the process. After Clint Eastwood turned down an offer to play the movie’s protagonist, Bronson was offered the role. During production, Leone recruited Donati to rewrite the script due to concerns over time limitations.

The original version by the director was 166 minutes (2 hours and 46 minutes) when it was first released on December 21, 1968. This was the version that was to be shown in European cinemas and was a box office success. For the US release on May 28, 1969, Once Upon a Time in the West was edited down to 145 minutes (2 hours and 25 minutes) by Paramount and was a financial flop. The film is considered by some to be the first installment in Leone’s Once Upon a Time Trilogy, followed by Duck, You Sucker!, called Once Upon a Time… the Revolution in parts of Europe, and Once Upon a Time in America, though the films do not share any characters in common.

The film is now generally acknowledged as a masterpiece and one of the greatest films ever made.[3][4] In 2009, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant”.[5]

The film portrays two conflicts that take place around Flagstone, a fictional town in the American Old West: a land battle related to construction of a railroad, and a mission of vengeance against a cold-blooded killer. A struggle exists for Sweetwater, a piece of land near Flagstone containing the region’s only water source. The land was bought by Brett McBain (Frank Wolff), who foresaw that the railroad would have to pass through that area to provide water for the steam locomotives. When crippled railroad tycoon Morton (Gabriele Ferzetti) learns of this, he sends his hired gun Frank (Henry Fonda) to intimidate McBain to move off the land, but Frank instead kills McBain and his three children, planting evidence to frame the bandit Cheyenne (Jason Robards). It appears the land has no owner; however, a former prostitute (Claudia Cardinale) arrives from New Orleans, revealing she is Jill McBain, Brett’s new wife and the owner of the land.

Meanwhile, a mysterious harmonica-playing gunman (Charles Bronson), whom Cheyenne later dubs “Harmonica”, pursues Frank. In the film’s opening scene, Harmonica kills three men sent by Frank to kill him. In a roadhouse on the way to Sweetwater, he informs Cheyenne that the three gunfighters appeared to be posing as Cheyenne’s men.

Back at Sweetwater, construction materials are delivered to build a railroad station and a small town. Harmonica explains that Jill will lose Sweetwater unless the station is built by the time the track’s construction crews reach that point, so Cheyenne puts his men to work building it.

Frank turns against Morton, who wanted to make a deal with Jill; Morton’s disability makes him unable to fight back. After having sex with Jill, Frank forces her to sell the property in an auction. He tries to buy the farm cheaply by intimidating the other bidders, but Harmonica arrives, holding Cheyenne at gunpoint, and makes a much higher bid based on his reward money for delivering Cheyenne to the authorities. Harmonica rebuffs an offer by Frank to buy the farm from him for one dollar more than he paid at the auction. As Cheyenne is placed on a train bound for the Yuma prison, two members of his gang purchase one-way tickets for the train, intending to help him escape.

Frank’s men betray and ambush him, having been paid by Morton to turn against him, but—much to Jill’s outrage—Harmonica helps Frank kill them, intending to kill Frank himself. Frank returns to Morton, only to find that he and the rest of Frank’s men have been killed in a battle with Cheyenne’s gang. Frank then goes to Sweetwater to confront Harmonica. On two occasions, Frank has asked Harmonica who he is, but both times Harmonica refused to answer him. Instead, he mysteriously quoted names of men Frank has murdered. This time, Harmonica says he will reveal who he is “only at the point of dying”. The two men position themselves for a duel, at which point Harmonica’s motive for revenge is revealed in a flashback:

A younger Frank, already a cruel bandit, is forcing a boy to support on his shoulders his older brother, whose neck is in a noose strung from an arch. As the boy struggles to hold his brother’s weight, Frank stuffs a harmonica into the boy’s mouth and tells him to play. The brother curses Frank and kicks his brother away, and dies.

Harmonica draws first and shoots Frank. As he lies dying, Frank again asks who he is, whereupon the harmonica is placed in Frank’s mouth. Frank nods weakly in recognition and dies. Harmonica and Cheyenne say goodbye to Jill, who is supervising construction of the railway station as the track-laying crews reach Sweetwater. Cheyenne collapses, revealing that he had been fatally shot by Morton during the fight with Frank’s gang. The work train arrives, Jill carrying water to the rail workers, while Harmonica rides away with Cheyenne’s body.

Leone’s intent was to take the stock conventions of the American Westerns of John Ford, Howard Hawks and others, and rework them in an ironic fashion, essentially reversing their intended meaning in their original sources to create a darker connotation.[22] The most obvious example of this is the casting of veteran film good guy Henry Fonda as the villainous Frank, but there are also many other, more subtle reversals throughout the film. According to film critic and historian Christopher Frayling, the film quotes from as many as 30 classic American Westerns.

The major films referenced include:

  • High Noon(1952): The opening sequence is similar to the opening of High Noon, in which three bad guys (Lee Van Cleef, Sheb Wooley and Robert J. Wilke) are shown waiting for the arrival of their leader (named Frank, played by Ian MacDonald) on the noon train. In the opening of Once Upon a Time in the West, three bad guys (Jack Elam, who appeared in a small part in High Noon, Woody Strode, and Al Mulock) take over and wait at a train station. However, the period of waiting is depicted in a lengthy ten-minute sequence, the train arrives several hours after noon, and its passenger is one of the film’s heroes (Charles Bronson) rather than its villain. The scene is famous for its use of natural sounds: a squeaky windmill, knuckles cracking, and Jack Elam’s character trying to shoo off a fly. According to rumor, Leone offered the parts of the three gunmen to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly stars Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach.[23]
  • 3:10 to Yuma(1957): This cult Western by Delmer Daves may have had considerable influence on the film. The most obvious reference is a brief exchange between Keenan Wynn‘s Sheriff and Cheyenne, in which they discuss sending the latter to Yuma  In addition, as in West the main villain is played by an actor (Glenn Ford) who normally played good guys. The film also features diegetic music (Ford at one point whistles the film’s theme song just as Harmonica provides music in West). And the scene in which Van Heflin‘s character escorts Ford to the railroad station while avoiding an ambush by his gang may have inspired the ambush of Frank by his own men in Leone’s film.
  • The Comancheros(1961): The names “McBain” and “Sweetwater” may come from this film. (Contrary to popular belief, the name of the town “Sweetwater” was not taken from Victor Sjöström‘s silent epic dramaThe Wind. Bernardo Bertolucci has stated that he looked at a map of the southwestern United States, found the name of the town in Arizona, and decided to incorporate it into the film. However, both “Sweetwater” and a character named “McBain” appeared in The Comancheros, which Leone admired.[24])
  • Johnny Guitar(1954): Jill and Vienna have similar backstories (both are former prostitutes who become saloonkeepers), and Harmonica, like Sterling Hayden‘s title character, is a mysterious, gunslinging outsider known by his musical nickname. Some of West’s central plot (Western settlers vs. the railroad company) may be recycled from Nicholas Ray’s film.[24]

  • The Iron Horse(1924): West may contain several subtle references to this film, including a low angle shot of a shrieking train rushing towards the screen in the opening scene, and the shot of the train pulling into the Sweetwater station at the end.[24]
  • Shane(1953): The massacre scene in West features young Timmy McBain out hunting with his father, just as Joey does in this movie. The funeral of the McBains is borrowed almost shot-for-shot from Shane.[24]
  • Vera Cruz(1954): In both films, Charles Bronson’s character plays a harmonica and is known only by a nickname.
  • The Searchers(1956): Leone admitted that the rustling bushes, the silencing of cicada chirps, and the fluttering pheasants that suggest a menace approaching the farmhouse when the McBain family is massacred were all taken from The Searchers. The ending of the film—where Western nomads Harmonica and Cheyenne move on rather than join modern society—also echoes the famous ending of Ford’s film.[24]
  • Warlock(1959): At the end of this film, Henry Fonda’s character wears clothing very similar to his costume throughout West. In addition, Warlock features a discussion about mothers between Fonda and Dorothy Malone that is similar to those between Cheyenne and Jill in West. Finally, Warlock contains a sequence in which Fonda’s character kicks a crippled man off his crutches, as he does to Mr. Morton in West.
  • The Magnificent Seven(1960): In this film, Charles Bronson’s character whittles a piece of wood. In West, he does the same, although in a different context. The Magnificent Seven was based on Seven Samuraiby Akira Kurosawa, whose film Yojimbo (“The Bodyguard”) was the inspiration (and later, litigation) behind Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars.
  • Winchester ’73(1950): It has been claimed that the scenes in West at the trading post are based on those in Winchester ’73, but the resemblance is slight.[24]
  • The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance(1962): The dusters (long coats) worn by Cheyenne and his gang (and by Frank and his men while impersonating them) resemble those worn by Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin) and his henchmen when they are introduced in this film. In addition, the auction scene in West was intended to recall the election scene in Liberty Valance.[24]
  • The Last Sunset(1961): The final duel between Frank and Harmonica is shot almost identically to the duel between Kirk Douglas and Rock Hudson in this film.[24]
  • Duel in the Sun(1946): The character of Morton, the crippled railroad baron in West, was based on the character played by Lionel Barrymore in this film.[24]
  • Sergeant Rutledge(1960): This John Ford Western, featuring Woody Strode as the title character, has a scene in which Constance Towers falls asleep in a chair with a rifle in her lap, just as Jill McBain does in Leone’s film.
  • My Darling Clementine(1946): In the trading post scene, Cheyenne slides Harmonica’s gun down the bar to him, challenging him to shoot – much like Morgan Earp (Ward Bond) sliding his weapon to brother Wyatt (Henry Fonda) in the Ford film when the Earps meet Doc Holliday (Victor Mature) for the first time. Also, a deleted scene in West featured Frank getting a shave with perfume in a barber’s shop, much like Fonda’s Wyatt.

Once Upon a Time in the West was itself explicitly referenced in The Quick and the Dead, when John Herod (Gene Hackman), faces Ellen (Sharon Stone), better known as “The Lady,” in a climactic gunfight. Ellen’s identity is a mystery until the end, when the audience sees Ellen’s flashback to Herod lynching her father, a sheriff. The sadistic Herod gives Ellen (then only a little girl) a chance to save her father by shooting through and breaking the rope wrapped around his neck, but Ellen accidentally kills her father by shooting him in the forehead. As with Frank, Herod yells “Who are you?”, and the only response he receives is an artifact from the earlier lynching—in this case, the sheriff’s badge that Ellen has kept all these years. The Quick and the Dead has another connection to Once Upon a Time in the West: It was the final film for Woody Strode, who died before it could be released.

Many other films have paid tribute to Once Upon a Time in the West over the years: Quentin Tarantino‘s Inglourious Basterds opens with a lengthy sequence entitled Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France (a phrase also used as a tagline for the 2009 film) which introduces the film’s primary villain and features the mass shooting of a family at a farmhouse; Tarantino’s Kill Bill films utilize snatches of Morricone’s harmonica and guitar soundtrack; Back to the Future Part III recreates the station rooftop scene from Once Upon a Time in the West; Baz Luhrmann‘s Australia features several nods to Leone’s film, including a homestead with a squeaky windmill, an almost-identical funeral scene, and an antagonistic relationship between the film’s villains; and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End features a parody of the “Man With a Harmonica” theme on the soundtrack, as the film’s protagonists parley on a sandbar before the final battle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time_in_the_West

A lot of people I think have the same reaction my wife had to Once Upon a Time in the West the first time they see it.  Let me tell you that 25 years after she laughed at it the first time, she wasn’t laughing any more.  Nobody is laughing any more, I can say that.  She had grown to appreciate what the film had been saying for decades.  She had learned by middle life what I had known as a 16-year-old, and once you know those types of things there is only one place for your mind to go.  You either become an Übermensch of some kind or you go insane.  There are a lot of characters in the world like Henry Fonda’s “Frank.”  And there is only one way to deal with them and Sergio Leone knew how to capture that conflict on-screen like no other person I’ve ever seen in film.  A lot of film makers have tried to capture the magic of Once Upon a Time in the West, but they never get it all.  Now, nearly five decades later the extremely bright international culture that produced that great film is nearly vanished.  It’s not a great film just because it’s a western—but because of the metaphors presented in the seemingly simplistic tapestry of the western—as it was invented in America.

It doesn’t matter that Sergio Leone took an American hero like Henry Fonda and made him into the villain—it’s that Leone knew how to take the strength of his characters whether it be Charles Bronson or Clint Eastwood and turn them into Übermenschs to deal with overwhelming evil captured quite accurately.  I always think of that dinner table during that filming of the Chinese New Year commercial and how it reminded me so much of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.  But even more than that it reminded me of Frank from Once Upon a Time in the West.  When Jill gets mad at Harmonica for helping keep Frank alive—it is for the reasons provided that many of the mysteries of our lives go unfulfilled.  And yes I’m talking in a bit of a riddle here, but to get the answer watch the movie and remember the line, “time flies.”  Knowing what to do with an enemy after you’ve identified them as such is what I have always found valuable about westerns.  To understand that you have an enemy is to have a set of values that an enemy fights against and in Once Upon a Time in the West that conflict is poetically displayed in ways that no film has ever mastered as well.  Many have tried but nobody has been able to hit it as well as Sergio Leone.  Time does fly, whether it’s a 16 year old discovering the truth of how a childhood movie favorite applies to the real world of politics and intrigue and how rivers are often polluted with the remains of politics washed off the parking lot after a strong rain—with the personal stamp of approval from a kindly old judge—or a wife who had grown over the years to see something totally different from her young 20-year-old eyes were ready to appreciate.  Some movies reflect culture—others like Sergio Leone’s films make it.  And that is why I think so much of him and his films—particularly, Once Upon a Time in the West.  If you haven’t seen it, you should.  Because “time flies” and so do good ideas—you have to hit them when you get the chance for the motivations only you know about—even if the morality for it only exists outside of time and space in a mythical realm where justice truly does rule—not with blinders—but a six-gun and a lot of tenacity.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Ann Becker’s Stand Against Ohio’s Central Committee: How John Kasich became an idiot–understanding Kantian philosophy

I remember doing a radio show several years ago with Matt Clark about how communists planned to take over both political parties in America and how they were going to infiltrate the media as far back as the late 1950s.  Obviously we have seen that happen in regard to the Democrats and the major media sources.  They call them progressives, but essentially they are communist leaning sympathizers by the nature of their philosophy.  But Matt and I also talked about the same thing happening to the Republican Party.  To many of us, the behavior of the GOP since as far back as 9-11 caused questioning minds to scratch their heads in bewilderment.  When John McCain lashed out at Bill Cunningham for being “divisive” during a campaign stop in Cincinnati during 2008 for which the WLW host was the emcee further preponderance of the evidence was presented.  These Republicans were not conservatives—but rather were something else and their strategic aims were much more centrist in their nature.  That by itself would not be alarming, but they seemed to be working with Democrats to pull that central position over time radically to the left.  Today’s “centrist” used to be yesterday’s socialist and yesterdays neutral supporter along the political spectrum is now openly communist—(progressive).  I dare one person to describe to me how progressivism differs from the communists of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1919.  (I’m waiting.)

Obviously I have known about this for a long time to even be able to talk about it in hindsight on Matt Clark’s show.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.  But the rest of the country really hasn’t noticed because of all the noise of modern society.  The evidence gets drowned out by the furious pace of our lives.  A lot of times the participants themselves don’t even realize the role they play—because they don’t know enough about history to understand.  One such example is the governor of my state John Kasich, who started off wonderfully six years ago, but is now an openly progressive loser who has evoked “god” as an excuse for expanding government reach and balancing the Ohio budget with more federal money through Obamacare exchanges.  If you want to know how deep this corruption has spread then look at the radicalism of the Ohio State Central Committee in supporting Kasich for the upcoming primaries when it is clearly evident that he doesn’t stand a chance at winning the popular vote.  Like trained drones the Ohio State Central Committee is sticking by the plan hashed out long ago—that Kasich the “moderate” would be elected president making it easy for the radical leftists to run over our nation without resistance.  Even though polling of prospective primary voters favor Trump and Cruz, the State Central Committee is doing what they planned all along.  They don’t listen to voters, they listen to the party bosses as to how and who to elect—and that plan was never in the favor of the American population.

This little trick is never talked about literally.  Every State Central Committee person is not part of some vast conspiracy—not knowingly.  It wasn’t that long ago that people like my friend Ann Becker from the Cincinnati Tea Party encouraged me to run for a Central Committee spot in my district.  Ann and her people are doing the good work of knocking moderate leftists out of the Central Committee to put more reasonable traditionalists on in their place.  To my eyes the functioning philosophy of the whole enterprise was noticeably Kantian and I knew that the basic philosophy for which they were functioning had to be changed before truly effective management of the Central Committee system could fully be implemented.  However, that doesn’t stop the good work of people inclined to suffer the daily abuse it takes to make micro changes along the way from doing so.  My role in all this has to be “different” so we all do what we are best at.  Ann is one of those people who likes to fight it out on the inside and she issued the following statement in regard to John Kasich.

I heard you! You do not support Governor Kasich for President – even if the Ohio GOP State Central Committee does. 


You reenergized my faith in the Constitutional people of Ohio! Yesterday I sent out an email about the Ohio Republican State Central Committee’s endorsement of Governor Kasich. An endorsement by a party means the members of that party are expected to support the candidate.


I received over 200 emails in two hours yesterday telling me ‘Hell No.’ The stories about Governor Kasich and the disdain for the Ohio Republican Party State Central Committee’s endorsement of Kasich was incredible. I could feel the anger coming out of my computer. 


Governor Kasich says he balanced Ohio’s budget – all Governors have to balance Ohio’s budget, it’s in the Ohio Constitution. He says he created jobs in Ohio – his term started after the crash in 2008. Yes, there were more jobs created in Ohio after 2008 but was it Kasich that created the jobs or the free market starting to improve? He takes credit for the jobs that our small business owners work hard and create – you didn’t build that Governor Kasich. 


Governor Kasich’s support of Common Core, his expanding Medicaid using Obamacare, his increase of spending in Ohio by 30%, his standing in the way of Right to Work, his raising taxes – all of these things and more are reasons that he is not the best choice for President.


I think we all agree that we want a President that will stand by the Constitution and give America a plan to move this country forward, not backward, toward freedom. Whoever that candidate is for you, vote for him or her. No one has the right to expect you to vote a certain way, party or not.


We want political parties that stand on principle, not on who they can get elected. Shame on the State Central Committee. They are up for reelection this March; we must watch those races. 


Your mission over the next eight weeks is to make sure everyone you know is ready to vote on March 15, or early vote at your county Board of Elections, starting February 17th. This is the most important primary in the history of the United States of America. Everyone who cares about the future of this country needs to get out and vote!


One of the biggest issues I heard about regarding Governor Kasich was his support of Common Core. I really thought he would flip-flop on this by now, but he is standing strong with Common Core. 


A horrible choice for our kids and Ohio Governor Kasich!


I had the privilege of hearing Heidi Huber give an update on Common Core last night. The video is below. We must stand together to make the change we want to see. 

Heidi Huber Common Core Update

 

Yours in Liberty,

Ann Becker

Kasich has been a disaster.  New York pundits like Bill O’Reilly on Fox News think that Kasich has done a fantastic job as governor.  But that’s because Kasich used to host his show and that Bill doesn’t live in Ohio.  Also, compared to New York, Ohio seems like a bastion of conservatism.  To Bill’s eyes, I’m sure Kasich looks like a conservative, but that’s only because the noise of modern politics drowns out the truth.    Kasich is broken at the level of his foundation philosophies.  He and the establishment types in the GOP have been taught to think incorrectly and now they are leading the party toward aims that were always intended to be noticeably communist.  Here is the evidence, first a definition of Kantian ethics followed by a nice little quote from the blogspot “Marxist Update.”

Kantian ethics refers to a deontological ethical theory ascribed to the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. The theory, developed as a result of Enlightenment rationalism, is based on the view that the only intrinsically good thing is a good will; an action can only be good if its maxim – the principle behind it – is duty to the moral law. Central to Kant’s construction of the moral law is the categorical imperative, which acts on all people, regardless of their interests or desires. Kant formulated the categorical imperative in various ways. His principle of universalisability requires that, for an action to be permissible, it must be possible to apply it to all people without a contradiction occurring. His formulation of humanity as an end in itself requires that humans are never treated merely as a means to an end, but always also as ends in themselves. The formulation of autonomy concludes that rational agents are bound to the moral law by their own will, while Kant’s concept of the Kingdom of Ends requires that people act as if the principles of their actions establish a law for a hypothetical kingdom. Kant also distinguished between perfect and imperfect duties. A perfect duty, such as the duty not to lie, always holds true; an imperfect duty, such as the duty to give to charity, can be made flexible and applied in particular time and place.  (Sound like Kasich?)

In political philosophy, Kant has had wide and increasing influence with the major political philosopher of the late twentieth century, John Rawls, drawing heavily on his inspiration in setting out the basis for a liberal view of political institutions. The nature of Rawls’ use of Kant has engendered serious controversy but has demonstrated the vitality of Kantian considerations across a wider range of questions than was once thought plausible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kantian_ethics

The poet Heine, who was a friend of Marx and upon whom the latter at one time had a great influence, depicted very vividly Kant’s motives for treading the two paths. Kant had an old and faithful servant, Lampe, who had lived with, and attended to, his master for forty years. For Kant this Lampe was the personification of the average man who could not live without religion. After a brilliant exposition of the revolutionary import of the Critique of Pure Reason in the struggle with theology and with the belief in a Divine Principle, Heine explained why Kant found it necessary to write the Critique of Practical Reason in which the philosopher re-established everything he had torn down before. Here is what Heine wrote:

“After the tragedy comes the farce. Immanuel Kant has hitherto appeared as the grim, inexorable philosopher; he has stormed heaven, put all the garrison to the sword; the ruler of the world swims senseless in his blood; there is no more any mercy, or fatherly goodness, or future reward for present privations; the immortality of the soul is in its last agonies — death rattles and groans. And old Lampe stands by with his umbrella under his arm as a sorrowing spectator, and the sweat of anguish and tears run down his cheeks. Then Immanuel Kant is moved to pity, and shows himself not only a great philosopher, but a good man. He reconsiders, and half good-naturedly and half ironically says, ‘Old Lampe must have a God, or else the poor man cannot be happy, and people really ought to be happy in this world. Practical common sense declares that. Well, meinet wegen, for all I care, let practical reason guarantee the existence of a God.'” [Heinrich Heine, Collected Works. W. Heineman, London, 1906. Vol. 5, pp. 150-151.]

http://marxistupdate.blogspot.com/2012/01/immanuel-kant-marxist-view.html

That’s how the political left has been able to implement and enact a communist strategy while at the same time convincing people who think they are hard-core conservative Central Committee members that they are doing the work established by Immanuel Kant.  What they don’t know is that Kant put down the foundations of Marxism which would evolve into open communism to essentially destroy the economy of Russia allowing Europe to rise to power after World War I.  It’s all German philosophy people.  But eventually Kant would influence John Rawls who nearly singlehandedly brought detrimental liberalism to most political institutions academic and social.  His magnum opus, A Theory of Justice (1971), was said at the time of its publication to be “the most important work in moral philosophy since the end of World War II“[4]and is now regarded as “one of the primary texts in political philosophy”.[5] His work in political philosophy, dubbed Rawlsianism,[6] takes as its starting point the argument that “the most reasonable principles of justice are those everyone would accept and agree to from a fair position”.[5] Rawls attempts to determine the principles of social justice by employing a number of thought experiments such as the famous original position in which everyone is impartially situated as equals behind a veil of ignorance.[5] He is one of the major thinkers in the tradition of liberal political philosophy. According to English philosopher Jonathan Wolff, while there could be a “dispute about the second most important political philosopher of the 20th century, there could be no dispute about the most important: John Rawls”.[4]

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rawls

It is because of Kant then Rawls that Governor Kasich and the Ohio State Central Committee is a bunch of idiots.  It is their foundation philosophy that Ann Becker and her purists are fighting against.  Of course Kasich and his gang don’t understand what Ann is talking about just as they can’t understand why Trump and Cruz are doing so well nationally in the 2016 presidential race—they continue to function based on the beliefs they have been taught by education institutions following the philosophy of John Rawls.  CLICK TO REVIEW.  They don’t understand because their thinking is wrong and out of touch with the rest of the world.  So I suggest dear reader that you do as Ann has asked, over the next eight weeks you need to register to vote in the primary and you need to defy the Ohio State Central Committee leadership and vote for anybody but John Kasich.  He is a failed person not because he’s bad—but because he was taught to be an idiot who follows Kant instead of some American philosopher with proper foundation thoughts, such as Thomas Jefferson or Ayn Rand.  Send the German philosophy back to Europe the way they sent it to Russia to destroy that nation.  Keep that stuff out of America and especially the state of Ohio.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

Film Review of ‘The Revenant’: An experience into the majestic scope of wilderness, history and human endeavor

 I had to put out of my mind all the lunacy of leftist Hollywood propaganda, the subtle messages within the film about the awe and majestic dominance of nature and Native Americans and Sean Penn’s associations with both the director and lead actors.  But it wasn’t that hard to overlook those minor issues because the essential story contained within The Revenant was just jaw-dropping and a game changer for American cinema. The Revenant is the Ben Hur of our 21st century.  It is our Citizen Kane.  It is our Gone with the Wind.  It is something that I didn’t think was possible in the modern studio system and it emphatically granted Leonardo DiCaprio the unequaled designation as one of the world’s greatest actors.  Politics aside—DiCaprio did great work—his portrayal of Hugh Glass was monstrously bold and awe inspiring—brimming with sheer masculinity.  It was a movie done with the greatest love imaginable for such a hard topic and controversial time period.  The Revenant was a film where everything works, and actually matched the marketing previews.  The opening scene was a battle containing several one shot tracks that I can’t see being duplicated by even the most skilled filmmakers any time soon.  It was ambitious, bold, sincere, and technically superior in every way that a movie can be.  It was and will always be cinematic genius stepping beyond contemporary philosophies to a thread of common human experience rarely ever touched by all but the most tenacious human beings.

The Revenant is a 2015 American biographical western film directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu set in 1823 Montana and South Dakota, which was inspired by the experiences of frontiersman and fur trapper Hugh Glass. The screenplay was written by Mark L. Smith and Iñárritu, based in part on Michael Punke‘s The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Will Poulter, and Domhnall Gleeson.[4]

Development of the film began in August 2001 when Akiva Goldsman purchased Punke’s manuscript with the intent to produce the film. The film was originally set to be directed by Park Chan-wook with Samuel L. Jackson in mind to star, and later by John Hillcoat with Christian Bale in negotiations to star. Both directors left the project, and Iñárritu signed on to direct in August 2011. In April 2014, after several delays in production due to other projects, Iñárritu confirmed that he was beginning work onThe Revenant and that DiCaprio would play the lead role. It is the second on-screen collaboration of Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy (the first being Inception). Principal photography began in October 2014; delays associated with location and crew challenges resulted in its end date moving from May to August 2015.

The Revenant premiered at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles on December 16, 2015 and had a limited release on December 25, 2015, followed by a wide release on January 8, 2016. The film received highly positive reviews from critics, who praised DiCaprio’s acting and Lubezki’s cinematography.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revenant_(2015_film)

With all that said, I had previously stated that I hoped The Revenant would be good enough to resurrect many stories from that particular time period in the American West, from 1750 to around 1830—which was a very key time for American philosophic development.  Understanding this time period helps define America’s place within the world as most of the nations around the globe were fighting it out on the plains of the American West.  The trouble is, doing such a thing is incredibly difficult.  Capturing the ruggedness of mountainous terrain in the hard months of winter under terrible shooting conditions, snow storms, avalanches, animal attacks, freezing water and many other hardships is something actors and film crews aren’t keen to endure—so my hopes of taking the Allen Ekert novels and getting them put up on the silver screen are faint because of the reality of such difficult shoots.   This novel relative to the mentioned Ekert work is simple.  The story of Hugh Glass is more focused and isolated as opposed to the grand scale of The Frontiersman, which featured Simon Kenton, Daniel Boone, George Washington, Tecumseh and Blue Jacket all with roles similar to the hardships of Glass.  Given the amount of money it took to put The Revenant on screen—approximately $135 million dollars it would take nearly ten times more than that to turn The Frontiersman into a novel with the same ambition—which is why nobody does it.  So give Alejandro G. Iñárritu credit, he was grossly over budget and he pissed off most of Hollywood including old friends to make the picture, but he stuck to it and delivered a film that should be profitable in the long run and earn the studios that supported him with some reluctance a share in the Academy Awards that will be granted to The Revenant.  The first weekend the film did well, nearly outselling The Force Awakens which is no small feat in January during the first round of NFL playoff games.  The theater I saw it in was sold out on a Saturday afternoon and that experience was so good that I’ll write a separate review just for that.  But there was no question, there was interest in this film and people wanted to see it—and when they did, they left the theater with more than they anticipated.  Even saying all that, there is no way to spoil the film because it’s not so much about the plot as much as it’s the experience of viewing the world through the character of Hugh Glass.

The Revenant is the type of film that will still be talked about thirty years from now—even 100 years—it is a must see movie.  It is gory in a way only hunters really understand, but the information is relevant to everyone.  It was gory without being disgusting.  The way that the hard nature of the world beyond civilization was captured is worth the price of admission alone.  There is no downside to The Revenant, it is history shown relatively non-politically with honesty and love and it deserves the support of everyone who loves to watch movies.  It was about love and romance without ever showing it and it was about honor even when all the tapestries of society had been stripped away.  It is one of those rare movies that really put the audience into the character’s very souls.  Give Alejandro González Iñárritu and Leonardo DiCaprio their Academy Awards now.  Heck, give Tom Hardy his best supporting actor award as well.  There is nothing wrong with The Revenant and everything right, sound editing, music, cinematography, set design, script, visual effects–everything.  I’d suggest buying a movie ticket today and going to see it as a two and a half hour vacation to a vast wilderness adventure.  It will likely leave you a different person upon your return—just as a hard backpacking trip into rugged country often does.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

El Chapo Exposes Communist Ties to Hollywood: Sean Penn’s interview for left-leaning Rolling Stone and the failure of all governments

It is absolutely disgusting that Joaquín Guzmán felt so comfortable with producers and actors of American cinema that the communist Sean Penn was invited to meet with the most wanted fugitive in the world for a Rolling Stone interview in September 2015. I seem to be calling a lot of people communists these days but it’s only because they are coming out of their shells and calling themselves that—in this case Penn who seems to represent the Hollywood leftist politics as one of their most vocal advocates says it about himself.  Penn is a talented actor and sometimes director but he might as well be a filmmaker from Venezuela, China or Russia—because there isn’t much about him that is American—and that holds true of his friends, George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, and James Cameron over the last 15 years. Hollywood is a cesspool of socialism and communism hidden behind Democratic fundraisers and environmental concerns.  The motion picture industry has been taken over by extreme leftist view points to such an extent that most of what they produce is ridiculously detrimental to our society.  While I was quite impressed with The Revenant, upcoming films like Dirty Grandpa with Robert De Niro show how far American cinema has embedded itself with drug avocation and liberal view points toward most social circumstances.  The situation is so bad that the most wanted fugitive in the world was able to contact members of Hollywood to give him a private interview at his home in the jungles of Sinaloa.

Of course Mexico and most of the media are trying to paint the communist Penn as a hero for leading authorities to El Chapo after a Friday night shootout led to his recapture.  But everyone is missing the point.  The CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, and all of Mexico was looking for the drug dealer yet Penn and Rolling Stone magazine were able to have an interview with him over four months ago and nothing was done.  Guzmán supposedly had a $100 million dollar hit on an American presidential candidate in Donald Trump—who is the Republican frontrunner—yet Hollywood was able to find and correspond with the drug dealer as literally every government on planet earth failed.  Give me a break!  This is a disgusting story that shows just how corrupt everything is from the President of the United States to all our government officials supposedly supplying security.  It’s not like El Chapo was hiding in some other country.  He was in his home state of Mexico all this time surrounded by thousands of people every day-and he was talking to Hollywood producers about making a movie about his life.  Sean Penn should be thrown in jail for conspiring with an enemy of the United States.  He’s no hero for getting Guzmán captured.  He’s a communist insurgent who associates with the worst the world has to offer in an attempt to overthrow American sovereignty.  Drugs in American culture are a Trojan horse weapon meant to topple our capitalists society with an overload of excess, and Hollywood is helping losers like El Chapo do it—and they should be prosecuted to the furthest extent of the law—everyone involved.  Here’s how our pathetic media outlets reported the story with links provided—article edited for priority briefing.

Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the Mexican drug lord known as El Chapo, started out in business not long after turning 6, selling oranges and soft drinks. By 15, he said in an interview conducted in a jungle clearing by the actor and director Sean Penn for Rolling Stone magazine, he had begun to grow marijuana and poppies because there was no other way for his impoverished family to survive.

Now, unapologetically, he said: “I supply more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anybody else in the world. I have a fleet of submarines, airplanes, trucks and boats.”

Though his fortune, estimated at $1 billion, has come with a trail of blood, he does not consider himself a violent man. “Look, all I do is defend myself, nothing more,” he told Mr. Penn. “But do I start trouble? Never.”

The seven hours Mr. Guzmán spent with Mr. Penn, and the follow-up interviews by phone and video, which began in October while he was on the run from the Mexican and American authorities, marked another surreal turn in his long-running battle to evade Mexican and American authorities. Mr. Guzmán, one of the world’s most wanted fugitives, who had twice escaped jail, was captured in his home state of Sinaloa in northwest Mexico on Friday after a gun battle with the authorities.

The interview with Rolling Stone, believed to be the first Mr. Guzmán has given in decades, was conducted over several sessions. It was scheduled to be published online Saturday night.

The interviews were held in a jungle clearing atop a mountain at an undisclosed location in Mexico. Surrounded by more than 100 cartel troops, and wearing a silk shirt and pressed black jeans, Mr. Guzmán sat down to dinner with Mr. Penn and Kate del Castillo, an actress who once played a drug kingpin in a soap opera.

Even though Mexican troops attacked his hide-out in the days after the meeting, necessitating a narrow escape, Mr. Guzmán continued the interview by BlackBerry Messenger and in a video delivered by courier to the pair later.

Mr. Penn’s account is likely to deepen the concern among the Mexican authorities already embarrassed by Mr. Guzmán’s multiple escapes, the months required to find him again and his status for some as something of a folk hero. Mr. Penn describes being waved through a military road checkpoint on his way to meet Mr. Guzmán, which Mr. Penn suggested was because the soldiers recognized Mr. Guzmán’s son. Mr. Penn said he was also told, during a leg of the journey taken in a small plane equipped with a scrambling device for ground radar only, that the cartel was informed by an insider when the military deployed a high-altitude surveillance plane that might have spotted their movements.

Mr. Penn and Mr. Guzmán spoke for seven hours, the story reports, at a compound amid dense jungle. The topics of conversation turned in unexpected directions. At one stage, Mr. Penn brought up Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential candidate; there were some reports that Mr. Guzmán had put a $100 million bounty on Mr. Trump after he made comments offensive to Mexicans. “Ah! Mi amigo!” Mr. Guzmán responded.

He asked Mr. Penn whether people in America were interested in him and laughed when Mr. Penn told him that the Fusion channel was repeating a documentary on him, “Chasing El Chapo.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/world/americas/el-chapo-mexican-drug-lord-interview-with-sean-penn.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0

It is widely considered to be against the basic principles of journalism to grant a subject such authority over a piece.

Rolling  Stone’s journalistic practices have been criticized since its publication of a now discredited gang-rape story at the University of Virginia.

A representative for Rolling Stone did not immediately reply to The Blaze’s request for comment Saturday night.

Guzman was captured by Mexican marines early Friday in a coastal city, and the attorney general says the drug boss was tracked down partly because he was making a biographical movie.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/01/09/rolling-stone-granted-el-chapo-approval-power-over-entire-exclusive-profile-on-him/

I don’t know who the hell Kate Del Castillos is, nor do I care. I want to see Mexico get Sean Penn and throw him in one of those crappy Mexican prisons. Give him a taste of what Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi, Sean Penn is scum, and is the face of the progressive liberal Democrat party. Throw the book at him Mexico! Force the US to extradite him. Use the Affluenza kid as bait.

http://www.fireandreamitchell.com/2016/01/09/sean-penn-under-investigation-for-meeting-el-chapo/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FireAndreaMitchell+%28Fire+Andrea+Mitchell%21+Exposing+Liberal+bias+cause+the+MSM+doesn%27t+have+to.%29

Conchita Alonso — known for her role in “The Running Man” and “Predator 2,” and who once acted in a 1988 film with Penn — had previously written an open letter criticizing him for his support for the Venezuelan dictator. Spotting the actor, who was also waiting for lost luggage, she approached him. When the “Milk” star recognized her, his smile disappeared: He told her he didn’t want to talk to her and accused her brother of trying to assassinate Chavez.

In an interview with WMAL, the actress said she told Penn, “You are in favor of Hugo Chavez and [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad.”

When Penn denied he supports Ahmadinejad and called Conchita Alonso “a pig,” she replied, “And you are a communist, Sean Penn! … You’re a communist asshole!”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/12/20/finally-actress-tells-sean-penn-hes-a-communist-asshole-video/#ixzz3woNTTedL

This whole story is just so terribly disgusting, it shows how embedded criminal elements are within Hollywood.   It also shows the network of priority that some of the worst that exist around the world gravitate to and why.  Then of course there is the sheer incompetence of all the governments involved in not picking up the loser Guzmán who was operating a multibillion dollar business right out in the open.  The whole thing is just pathetic.  And during the drama, Donald Trump turned out to be right about everything, including how cozy Guzmán’s relationship was with the United States.  Trump also deserves credit for staying tough even with the $100 million dollar bounty on his head.  Apparently nobody else has any toughness anymore, so it’s good to see somebody out there still does.  This whole case just exhibits why we need a wholesale change in American culture from the very top to the deepest bottom and scumbags like El Chapo and his criminal children deeply connected to Hollywood and Vegas need to be rooted out and punished for their work against American strategic objectives.

Personally for me, I don’t like drugs—in ANY form.  I don’t like drinking.  I don’t like collectivist based governments—such as communism and socialism—and I don’t like the worst scum bags of our planet using an American industry as a means of social destabilization right under the watch of all our tax payer funded governments.  Want to know why socialism and communism will never work and why in America we need guns—lots of guns?  This El Chapo story contains the very reasons with great illustration into the worst that human beings bring to the table of thought and action and exemplifies why the only sane people left in America are supporting Donald Trump for president.

This is the guy who was contacted and captured El Chapo.  What a bunch of dumb asses.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

Why the NRA Didn’t Attend the CNN Town Hall: The tricks progressives play to advance their strategic objectives

When President Barack Obama agreed to the CNN Town Hall debate on Gun Control in America on January 7th 2016 immediately after he signed executive orders against them, I couldn’t help but think of the typical consensus building exercises that public schools use when they want to bend communities over their knees for tax increases.  When my home district of Lakota conducted those types of meetings even though I was against the tax increases, I didn’t attend because I didn’t want to break bread with the enemy.  So I can understand why the NRA refused the CNN Town Hall.   There was little for them to accomplish having a public meeting with Barack Obama in a consensus building exercise unless you are willing to go to battle in front of everyone and embarrass the President.  That is the reason I didn’t attend the Lakota meetings—because I didn’t want to make friends and find common ground due to the foundation philosophies being too far off between us.  CLICK THE MANY LINKS TO REVIEW.  With that said, I think the NRA should have attended and engaged the president the way Taya Kyle did and several others—but I understand why they didn’t.

The problem with progressives, which the president certainly embodies that definition–is that they use compromise to advance their plans.  When you negotiate with them and give a little they always come back later to take a little more.  Compromising with them only opens the door for more impositions.  For instance, back on the public school debate, they always suggest that a little bit of tax today will save a generation of children tomorrow, so why not give a few dollars of your property value to the children who need it.  However, because of the progressive management of public school systems and the escalating costs associated with their style of management, every five years those schools continuously return to voters with the same argument because they never change their essential behavior.  The progressive oriented aggressors in this case always favor consensus building exercises because they know that no matter what concessions are achieved during a public meeting, that they will always come back to take a little more—and they continue forever until there is nothing left because the basic philosophy of a typical progressive is rooted in communism.  So in the case of a school system, every five years school board management typically changes a bit as well as the top-level teachers who take up the most payroll in a budget so the same people aren’t always asking for the new tax increase.  But, because the foundation philosophy of progressives is communism each new generation of progressives coming to consensus building meetings can trust that new concessions will be demanded and that the slow advancement toward a centrally controlled society will eventually be achieved once property taxes are too high to mandate private property ownership.

For instance, in my community, Liberty Township, Ohio, it is nearly impossible for a private owner to hold more than 10 acres of land because the taxes are so incredibly high.  Those taxes are high because of community mismanagement—local government making too many concessions over the years to the school system of Lakota and other public employees.  The only real decisions that large land holders have is to sell their old farms to developers who will turn plots of land to neighborhoods that put more kids in schools requiring more public employees to deal with the increase in children.  Essentially two decades of tax increases created the problem so now there is suburban overcrowding and the golf courses near my home are struggling to justify holding so much land at such a high rate of tax to benefit so few people.  This forces the land use to migrate from exclusivity among say country club affluence into more of a “community” centered use, which progressives have always been in support of.  For the people who loved the open farm land and large plots of land under private ownership progressives within the school system and local government have managed to convert the land use to large plots of that same land being managed by socialist oriented neighborhood homeowner associations that collectively decide whether or not you can have up a garage door or park an RV in your driveway.  As that same land used to be managed by a private family that might have had a target range in their backyard and a few cars being always worked on next to a barn, the land was converted into something entirely different and much more conducive toward the aims of progressives—which are aligned with the original communist goals of eradicating private property.

Nobody ever says it directly but if you get them to dinner away from a crowd’s ear people like Jeffery Stec who ran the Lakota “community conversations” have every intention of advancing progressive agenda concerns against all individual rights.  Even though Anderson Cooper at CNN did a great job with the debate at the Town Hall featuring Barack Obama just days after the president’s executive orders angered gun owners immensely, both Cooper and Obama as progressives were working to whittle away the resistance to their eventual aims of collective assimilation.  If you watch the debate carefully dear reader, you will see the tactics.  For instance, when Obama had to deal with the widow of Chris Kyle followed up by the rape victim—both who were strong supporters of the Second Amendment, Obama took the edge off their resistance with compliments to ease into his eventual position.  For either of the two women to attack Obama after he had provided such compliments would make them appear as the villains.  So Obama took away their aggression with compliments in a public setting.  The president yielded no ground, yet Taya and others had to, so to appear civil in the discourse.  CNN gave president Obama the high ground strategically, and once he had that, there was no way to create leverage against him in debate.  The public watching all this then assumed that Obama seemed reasonable.  CNN appeared to side at times with Taya Kyle and other Second Amendment supporters.  But in the long run, resistance to the gun control measures loosened allowing them to stand against scrutiny.  Then when the next tragedy occurs, more laws will be proposed.  Just like the land grabs of local public schools converting over time the use and philosophic position of the community toward such use progressives will gain and everyone else loses.

There is a way to attack such town hall effectiveness against the other side.  It is difficult, but possible.  In such a conflict, the NRA doesn’t stand to gain much—only to hold their ground.  The real test of Obama’s consensus building exercise would be to speak at an NRA event, on ground controlled by gun rights supporters.  CNN is certainly sympathetic toward Obama and all past and future progressives—so it was a safe zone for the president.  But a NASCAR event or a gun show would be a different story.  Obama wouldn’t give the same town hall in front of such an audience if he were invited because he would not be able to maintain the high ground in the debate.  Under such conditions, Obama would be equal at best, and that would not give him the strategic platform to execute the progressive objectives.  So it goes both ways.  The NRA did not attend the CNN Town Hall because by the nature of it, the president controlled the high ground in the debate, just as Jeffery Stec in my community controlled the community conversations.  All this is a variation of the Delphi Technique that I talked so much about over five years ago.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.  The intent of such games is not to find mutual understanding—it is to advance the cause of progressives—which always lead to further impositions against freedom—so the only way not to lose such an engagement is to not participate.  However, that only works so long.  Eventually, a conflict is mandated and for that reason, the NRA needs to think of ways to go on the offensive.  My suggestion would be to invite the president to the next NRA event and strip him of the security of dealing with the friendly studios of CNN.  In the battle over public opinion a new strategy is needed.  Yielding to progressives will not get the job done—as many homeowners who used to hold large plots of land now clearly understand.  You have to know what kind of game we are all playing before you can win it.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

Hillary the Communist: Admitting the truth, even when it hurts

I’ve been saying it for a long time; socialism is the basic philosophy of the Democratic Party.  People used to think I was being an extremist when I stated that teacher unions expected socialism from voters and school boards essentially teaching it to students in public education.  Most labor unions are functioning socialist enterprises which of course leads directly to small “c” communism.  Worse than socialists are “progressives” who have a strong belief in communism as a foundation principle to their style of governing.  Most progressives will deny it, but if you placed their belief system on a social scale next to the Bolsheviks of 1919 they would be indistinguishable from each other.  There is a reason that progressives and other liberals don’t want people to read Ayn Rand, who as an American novelist wrote quite passionately about communism in her very good book, We the Living.  I have known this for a very long time because I am an avid reader, and I understand history so I have been able to function from a position of knowledge and not just the marketing of ideas proposed in what people think is modern times.  That’s why it was so ridiculously stupid of Hillary Clinton when pressed by Chris Mathews—who is a fan of the Democratic candidate for president, to declare that she was a progressive Democrat.   That is equivalent to saying about herself under a proper definition that she’s a communist socialist.

This isn’t the first time this year that Chris Mathews on the very “progressive” MSNBC cable channel has asked someone of great importance within the Democratic Party what the difference between a socialist and a Democrat is.  But this one had more bite because Hillary had no idea how to answer the question even though she knew the question was coming at some point, because he had asked it before.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.  She couldn’t answer the question because there isn’t any difference.  Democrats today in 2016 are essentially the communists and socialists of the last century—the only real difference is that they changed the name.  Their essential philosophy is the same.

I don’t have much patience for stupid people—I’ll have to be honest.  When I had this education debate years ago within the media, at school boards, in education reform groups—and with other politicians I thought people close to the situation already knew what I was saying, that the essential product of public schools was socialism.  I had known it for years, so I assumed that we could have a conversation from a reasonable vantage point.  But the mad mothers and fathers angry at me for proposing to take away their tax money for essentially a day time socialist training center—which is what every public school is—provoked a lot of anger which I had no tolerance for.   Those idiots thought they would harass me online, come to my house, and attack me through social networks with all the socialist flair utilized in that novel, We the Living and that for some reason I’d just take it.  No, that’s not how things work.

I have always known that socialists and Democrats were essentially the same because I have always worked hard to have the answers to things—even if those answers were inconvenient.  For instance, everyone knows I have written a lot about Star Wars.  It could be said that I’ve been a mega fan.  I know Star Wars better than most people know their own families.  However, I do not like the new films by Disney and I will not read the books or buy into their product any longer in a post George Lucas era.  I see clearly in Star Wars now massive progressive influences and I will reject it—because I know better.  When something lets me down, I drop it like a rock in less than a second.  I went though a similar thought process with public education, our legal system, environmentalism, even family members who have not behaved properly.  It really didn’t matter what or who they were, I have dropped them at the first sign that they do not comply with my ethics and values.  And when the question comes as to who am I to judge—the reply is simple—an individual who works hard to be that way.  When I said that socialism was embedded deep in our culture I was able to do that because I was able to emotionally divorce myself from attachments that might skew my vision from the reality of knowledge.  So even when many were writing newspapers and television stations protesting my coverage by them because of my “extremist” language I never recanted or backed off because to do so would be to lie.  To lie would be wrong because it would force a new definition for the things I knew to be true—and that wasn’t going to happen.

This charade has went on for a long time largely because members of the media, like Chris Mathews accepted the revisionist definitions of a party he obviously supports—the Democrats whom he probably believes is still the party of JFK or LBJ.  The truth however is that Republicans like Jeb Bush and John Kasich are the new Democrats by proper definitions because the political lens of perception has been moved so far to the political left.  So it appears that Chris Mathews and others like him are having a real debate within themselves about the differences between socialists and Democrats or even communists and progressives.  The answer has always been there no matter how painful it might have been, or inconvenient.

I said it during many public education debates that if people wanted socialism and voted for it, then so be it—but they better know what it was they were voting for.  It’s really not a firm indication of public sentiment if Democrats avoid the proper definition for what they are doing just to win support of the public hoping slowly to cook the American public from capitalism to communism with changed terminology.  Democrats and progressives have arrived at this political climate by deceit, not by actually selling who and what they are.  What provokes the debate even now is that Bernie Sanders as a president is openly calling himself a socialist which then forces Hillary Clinton to name the difference.  Which of course she can, so she did the worst thing she could have done—she called herself worse—essentially a communist.  But she hoped that nobody understood the definitions and would bother to look.  Of course that doesn’t fly with me.

Hundreds of thousands of people read this blog site every year from countries all over the globe.  Most of those people disagree with me about one thing or another.  Sometimes they get so angry they call me names which always starts a small war of words.  Over the course of the last six years that I have been writing at this site—every single day in voluminous amounts—nobody has been able to dispute my claims factually.  Even the worst of the teacher’s union radicals within the state of Ohio could dispute it when I called them all socialists—sometimes quite publicly.  I have talked about it on the radio and written about socialism in public schools and most government offices extensively, and nobody at any academic level has been able to dispute it under any circumstance.  And believe me, the radical loser professors who call me an anti-education radical gun-nut would love to beat me intellectually if they could—but they can’t.  The reason they can’t is for the same reason that Hillary Clinton couldn’t provide a different definition of socialism in comparison to a typical member of the Democratic Party.  When the Party’s top voices cannot give a single instance of how Democrats are different from socialists, the truth is staring you right in the face dear reader.  And I have been telling you that for a very long time.  Once again, people should have listened.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

The Crying Bastard Obama: Why the political left is technically mentally ill

First of all, the crying bastard President Obama does not represent my views—he is not “my” president.  I say bastard of him for two reasons, he is obnoxiously disagreeable toward traditional American views, and he was born to unmarried parents as there is a lot of questions regarding his father.  So he fulfills the appropriate definition of a bastard by most accepted definitions—so it’s not a derogatory term.  Regarding the crying, I said the same thing about John Boehner.  In spite of what modern feminists and other progressives say, it’s not alright for a man to cry over stupid things.  Gun violence and mass shootings are nearly exclusively the result of mismanagement by the government.  Government in most cases has created the violent communities that shootings occur in, like Chicago.  Or they have let terrorists fester within our borders without acting before terror activities have occurred.  Americans have given up a lot of freedoms supposedly for the sake of security and that has turned out to be a stupid thing to do. Government has failed to do its job and now they want more power to do an even worse job—and to get it, the president resorted to crying like a child and that is pathetic.

The video above is a warning from Canada where their gun laws are pacing themselves to the rest of the so-called developed world—the kind of world the crying Obama referred to.  It is the direction America is heading so pay attention to it.  In it a gun rights supporter was condemned by the government every way they legally could for defending his property from some assailants launching firebombs at him.  The Canadian government did not want him to defend his property especially with a firearm, so they did worse to him personally than the fire bombers.  It is a very sad case and is the direction that gun laws in America by cry baby politicians want to take our society.  It’s the wrong direction and should be reversed immediately.

The attack on that individual gun owner has the very subtle inclination that property rights are not the value of any individual possession, so there should never be an instance where an individual should have to defend themselves or their possessions.  To the progressive descendant of communism individuals should surrender themselves to criminal intent for the benefit of the greater good.  If a criminal wants something you have, they should have the right to it under the umbrella of wealth redistribution and no individual should feel compelled to take a life for the protection of a possession.  The same mentality resides within the realm of a spouse—this is why progressives seek to demean family value with gay rights and welfare programs—to weaken individual input.  Therefore, guns should not be allowed to protect an individual from criminal intent because to their view as a mass society of collectivism, collateral damage is perfectly acceptable—if the greater good is placed as a value over individuals and their possessions.

But that is clearly not the type of society that we have in the United States.   Our politicians do not currently represent the type of people who currently make up most of the American population between city areas.  Most of those politicians manipulated their way by default into positions of power only to turn their eyes toward Europe for guidance and that’s not acceptable—especially when people like Obama standing in our White House cry to the world about how he wants to stop gun violence on a mass scale but fails to shed a tear when a white woman is gunned down by an illegal alien in San Francisco for no reason at all—but mass government mismanagement.  The tears are only shed for the collective entity of our global population, not the rights of one woman, or her father when a cold-blooded killer took away from them the love they shared as a possession of emotion.

That is just how sick progressives are in their views of the world.  They will support the mass extinction of babies through abortion, and support the terrorism in the Middle East but will take a hard stand against the rancher who wants to protect their grazing rights or an individual gunman who protects their wife or home from an assailant.  Their broken philosophy is always an emphasis on mass collectivism as opposed to individual integrity.  That is why so many progressives have mental illnesses—where their values are not reflected in their daily actions—because they associate behavior by the values of the collective as opposed to their own private behavior.  So if everyone is acting poorly, whether they are drunken losers or a mob rioting in the streets they can justify the morality of bad behavior by the measurement of the group association.  If everyone is doing wrong, then it’s OK to also do so—so long as a majority is in agreement.

That in essence is the largest problem that there is in regard to Obama’s executive orders against personal firearms issued on January 5th 2016—because it gives those same masses the ability to define sanity.  On the surface the proposals sound reasonable, background checks strengthening, gun show restrictions, and attempting to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally deficient.  The trouble is that the door is now open for the government to determine that every person on some sort of pain medication or depression illness is subject to the interpretation of being mentally unstable to purchase or own a firearm.  Additionally, the slippery slope of judgment for sanity will be interpreted by government with the same rationalization that we see among the current masses—the depraved lunatics of urban riots, public schools, and open socialists—the Bernie Sanders type of supporters.  Mental acuity will then be determined by the victor of whatever political party holds the White House at any particular time which would be bad for both sides.  With that additional interpretation the same government that decided that it was alright for the IRS to use a tax status to badger Tea Party groups will determine what constitutes mental health.

For the family that believes that a housewife should watch over the children at home in a very traditional way, and has a personal history of protesting Smart Meters—a progressive run federal government would likely view that behavior as insane and would prohibit those citizens from owning firearms.  A similar family that has a Twitter history showing strong conservative views would likely put those citizens on a watch list banning further purchases of guns.  It would be as simple as that.  The pattern around the world from Canada to Australia is already in place, we have the fortune in America to see what our current politicians are up to, because they are copying those fools from Europe and other places on removing firearms from their society to make way for some strategy that certainly works against individual liberty.  If allowed to feaster, Obama’s path would certainly lead to a similar letter as those proposed in Canada—be prepared to surrender firearms of a certain make and model until they are all gone from society and confiscated by the government.  They never do things in swift strokes, but over a long period of time gradually wearing down resistance to their diabolical utterances.

I’ve had a Federal Firearms License before, so I know what it’s like for them to demand to see your paperwork in the middle of dinner, or on a Friday afternoon while you’re sitting naked in your hot tub with your wife just enjoying the day in your own backyard.  When given the right for some pin headed bureaucrat to harass an individual, they nearly always do.  Because their value system is not based on individual integrity, but mass approval—so if their peers approve of their behavior of harassment, then they feel validated to do so—they use government coercion to exert force on individuals so to preserve the collective masses and their whims of necessity.

Guns were always meant to protect the individual against mass tyranny and to guarantee that private property would remain valuable in the course of American history.  Confiscation is the path to losing all freedoms and giving the drooling mouths of bureaucrats all the power they need to exact tyranny upon individuals and their possessions.  Hidden behind the government and their global backers is the long diabolical yearnings of communism which fuels their effort, the Karl Marx war against individuality and personal property.  So it is behind that premise that governments are at war with firearms and what drives Obama to cry in front of the world because deep down inside his essential being, he has a lot more in common with Karl Marx than he does Thomas Jefferson.  It is because of menaces like Barack Obama and all his progressive friends that Jefferson uttered……………“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”  You can’t very well do that if they are armed, and you’re not.  Hence, the reason for gun control around the world.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

How the Government of Qatar Runs Hillary Clinton: Short of an armed revolution, Trump is the best answer

 

Did Hillary Clinton deserve what Trump did to her in Biloxi, MS on January 2, 2016?  Yes, absolutely!  As I reported yesterday, CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW, Hillary is guilty of working with the government of Qatar to advance ISIS.  ISIS is her creation along with Barack Obama, so she had some considerable gall blaming Trump for being the greatest advertisement for ISIS.   So be sure to watch this speech then read some information about the government of Qatar below to learn more about who Hillary Clinton associates with, and why.

The political system of Qatar is an absolute monarchy, with the Emir of Qatar as head of state and head of government. Under the 2003 constitutional referendum it should become a constitutional monarchy.[1] Sharia Law is the main source of Qatari legislation according to Qatar’s Constitution.[2][3]

Sharia law is the main source of Qatari legislation according to Qatar’s Constitution.[2][3] Sharia law is applied to laws pertaining to family law, inheritance, and several criminal acts (including adultery, robbery and murder). In some cases in Sharia-based family courts, a female’s testimony is worth half a man’s and in some cases a female witness is not accepted at all.[4] Codified family law was introduced in 2006. In practice, Qatar’s legal system is a mixture of civil law and Islamic law.[5][6]trump-warrior

Flogging is used in Qatar as a punishment for alcohol consumption or illicit sexual relations.[7] Article 88 of Qatar’s criminal code declares the punishment for adultery is 100 lashes.[8] Adultery is punishable by death when a Muslim woman and a non-Muslim man are involved.[8] In 2006, a Filipino woman was sentenced to 100 lashes for adultery.[8] In 2010, at least 18 people (mostly foreign nationals) were sentenced to flogging of between 40 and 100 lashes for offences related to “illicit sexual relations” or alcohol consumption.[9] In 2011, at least 21 people (mostly foreign nationals) were sentenced to floggings of between 30 and 100 lashes for offences related to “illicit sexual relations” or alcohol consumption.[10] In 2012, six expatriates were sentenced to floggings of either 40 or 100 lashes.[7] Only Muslims considered medically fit were liable to have such sentences carried out. It is unknown if the sentences were implemented.[11] More recently in April 2013, a Muslim expatriate was sentenced to 40 lashes for alcohol consumption.[12][13][14] In June 2014, a Muslim expatriate was sentenced to 40 lashes for consuming alcohol and driving under the influence.[15] Judicial corporal punishment is common in Qatar due to the Hanbali interpretation of Sharia Law.

Stoning is a legal punishment in Qatar.[16] Apostasy is a crime punishable by the death penalty in Qatar.[17] Blasphemy is punishable by up to seven years in prison and proselytizing can be punished by up to 10 years in prison.[17] Homosexuality is a crime punishable by the death penalty for Muslims.[18]

Alcohol consumption is partially legal in Qatar, some five-star luxury hotels are allowed to sell alcohol to their non-Muslim customers.[19][20] Muslims are not allowed to consume alcohol in Qatar and Muslims caught consuming alcohol are liable to flogging or deportation. Non-Muslim expatriates can obtain a permit to purchase alcohol for personal consumption. The Qatar Distribution Company (a subsidiary of Qatar Airways) is permitted to import alcohol and pork; it operates the one and only liquor store in the country, which also sells pork to holders of liquor licences.[21] Qatari officials have also indicated a willingness to allow alcohol in “fan zones” at the 2022 FIFA World Cup.[22]

Until recently, restaurants on the Pearl-Qatar (a man-made island near Doha) were allowed to serve alcoholic drinks.[19][20] In December 2011, however, restaurants on the Pearl were told to stop selling alcohol.[19][23] No explanation was given for the ban.[19][20] Speculation about the reason includes the government’s desire to project a more pious image in advance of the country’s first election of a royal advisory body and rumours of a financial dispute between the government and the resort’s developers.[23]

In 2014, Qatar launched a modesty campaign to remind tourists of the modest dress code.[24] Female tourists are advised not to wear leggings, miniskirts, sleeveless dresses and short or tight clothing in public. Men are advised against wearing only shorts and singlets.[25]

As of 2014, certain provisions of the Qatari Criminal Code allows punishments such as flogging and stoning to be imposed as criminal sanctions. The UN Committee Against Torture found that these practices constituted a breach of the obligations imposed by the UN Convention Against Torture.[26][27] Qatar retains the death penalty, mainly for threats against national security.

Under the provisions of Qatar’s sponsorship law, sponsors have the unilateral power to cancel workers’ residency permits, deny workers’ ability to change employers, report a worker as “absconded” to police authorities, and deny permission to leave the country.[28] As a result, sponsors may restrict workers’ movements and workers may be afraid to report abuses or claim their rights.[28] According to the ITUC, the visa sponsorship system allows the exaction of forced labour by making it difficult for a migrant worker to leave an abusive employer or travel overseas without permission.[29] Qatar also does not maintain wage standards for its immigrant labour. Qatar commissioned international law firm DLA Piper to produce a report investigating the immigrant labour system. In May 2014 DLA Piper released over 60 recommendations for reforming the kafala system including the abolition of exit visas and the introduction of a minimum wage which Qatar has pledged to implement.[30]

Cases of ill-treatment of immigrant labour have been observed. The Nepalese ambassador to Qatar, Maya Kumari Sharma, described the emirate as an “open jail”.[31] Qatar does not have national occupational health standards or guidelines, and workplace injuries are the third highest cause of accidental deaths.[32] In May 2012, Qatari officials declared their intention to allow the establishment of an independent trade union.[33] Qatar also announced it will scrap its sponsor system for foreign labour, which requires that all foreign workers be sponsored by local employers, who in some cases hold workers’ passports and can deny them permission to change jobs.[33]

On October 10, 2005, for the first time, Qatar was elected to a two-year term on the UN Security Council for 2006–2007.

According to BBC, in April 2006 Qatar announced that it will give US$50 million (£28 million) to the new Hamas-led Palestinian government. Hamas, an ally of Iran and Hezbollah, is considered by the US and the EU to be a terrorist organization.

In May 2006, Qatar pledged more than $100 million to Hurricane Katrina relief to colleges and universities in Louisiana affected by the hurricane. Some of this money was also distributed to families looking to repair damaged homes by Neighborhood Housing Services of New Orleans, Inc.

With the advent of the Arab Spring in 2011, Qatar has been seen as meddling in the affairs of other Arab countries, supporting insurgents, generally and increasingly radical Islamists and Salafists.[45] This policy has led to rebukes by neighboring Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates.[45] Qatar joined NATO operations in Libya and reportedly armed Libyan opposition groups.[46] It is also became a major provider of money and support for rebel groups in the Syrian civil war.[47] With close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood the emirate’s funding for rebels strongly favored Islamic and Salafist forces in both Libya and Syria.[45]

The government of Qatar owns the Al Jazeera television network. The network has been accused of being biased and taking an active role in the affairs of other countries specifically during the Arab Spring in 2011.[48] Numerous countries have complained about biased reporting in support of Qatar policy.

Most of the developed countries (plus Brunei and Indonesia) are exempt from visa requirements. Citizens of exempted countries can also request a joint visa that allows them to travel to Oman as well.[49]

Qatar is member of ABEDA, AFESD, AL, AMF, ESCWA, FAO, G-77, GCC, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO, ICRM, IDB, IFAD, IFRCS, IHO (pending member), ILO, IMF, International Maritime Organization, Inmarsat, Intelsat,Interpol, IOC, ISO (correspondent), ITU, NAM, OAPEC, OIC, OPCW, OPEC, UN, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNIDO, UPU, WCO, WHO, WIPO, WMO, and WTO.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Qatar

The House of Thani (Arabic: آل ثاني Al Thani‎) is the ruling family of Qatar, whose origins can be traced back to the Ma’adid clan of the Banu Tamim tribal confederation.[1]

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Thani

When Trump said in his speech that the Iran deal was so bad that it was suspicious he’s talking about this history with Qatar and Hezbollah. The plan from Democrats like Obama and the Clintons have been to deplete American resources so that the Middle East can rise up and strengthen as an independent region with Palestinian leanings working closely with Iran.  To show the extent of Qatar’s activism into American politics consider the effort expensed by Al Jazeer America to expand its operations within the United States even with a zero share in the ratings.  The system is completely rigged against us and Trump is exposing it.

Al Jazeera America had been a disaster from the start. Its $500 million buy of Al Gore’s Current TV had been expensive but considered worth the price to get access to a huge number of cable households through Gore’s sweetheart deals with big cable companies. But the cable companies knew the difference between Al Gore and Al Jazeera and they wanted that oil money Qatar was throwing around.

So did Al Gore.

Gore had initially protected Al Jazeera by accusing cable companies who wanted to drop it of Islamophobia, but then turned around and sued Al Jazeera when it backstabbed him by using millions of dollars of his money in a slush fund to pay cable channels for airing its propaganda.

The House of Thani was forced to dig deeper to get Al Jazeera America into as many homes as possible, but it still wasn’t getting any actual viewers. Its average daily ratings of 13,000 viewers were less than half the already miniscule 31,000 viewers of Gore’s failed Current TV project.

Qatar had paid $25,000 per viewer and with some nights registering a zero in the demo, recouping that money through advertising was not a realistic business plan.

And then things got even worse.

Al Jazeera America’s biggest hit was “Real Money with Ali Velshi” with 54,000 viewers. Those were the kinds of ratings usually associated with cable hits like the deceased FOX Soccer Channel, but that was as good as it got for Qatar’s $500 million investment. And like all good things at Al Jazeera, it wouldn’t last.

http://www.aim.org/guest-column/the-fall-of-al-jazeera-america/

That is just the tip of the iceberg but it gives a good idea of why Hillary Clinton has been promoting Al Jazeera over domestic news organizations.  These are crooked people up to no good and the best weapon we have against them is Trump.  For all the reasons articulated in his Biloxi, MS speech, Hillary deserves everything she’s getting.  Clinton and her conspirators have been working with foreign governments against American interests and that idiot wants to be President.   The bottom line is that we can’t trust anybody else to do the job because they have allowed the Clintons to do everything they have up to this point.   And it’s time to end that—and only Trump is willing at that level to do the job.  And it’s about time.  The establishment is corrupt beyond belief and short of an armed revolution, Trump is the best answer in 2016.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

Obama Couldn’t have Competed on ‘The Apprentice’: Understanding how severe the National Debt really is

Let’s assume for a moment that Barack Obama is not an insurgent economic terrorist attempting to destroy the American economy—but is rather—just an idiot.  Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt just for the sake of fairness.   Then it makes it that much more preposterous that during the White House Correspondence Dinner of 2011 that Obama roasted Donald Trump in front of a packed house diminishing greatly the television show The Apprentice which was a top rated program on NBC during its run.   CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.  Obama suggested that his role as president was so much more profound and that he didn’t have time for silly television shows that featured basic management techniques.   As a former community organizer now in the role of President of the United States, he was above that kind of silliness, and the crowd had a lot of fun at Trump’s expense.  This was very disingenuous, because the show was far more successful than anything that Barack Obama had personally ever done in his life and was about things that the President clearly didn’t understand like how to make money in a capitalist society.  The comments were a window into the ridiculous proposals economically that the POTUS embraced along with most of the world media and were just preposterous.  So for fun, and practical examples, let’s go back in time a bit to the very first Apprentice episode in 2004—where the contestants were selling lemonade in New York City for a chance to become an employee for the Trump Organization.

I never watched much television back then.  I knew most of what the television show was displaying and I was doing it in real life.  But it was interesting to go back and watch these shows—which aren’t that old and I noticed a few things.  First of all, the debt clock in New York during 2004 was at $6 trillion dollars which at the time seemed like a ridiculous amount of money.   However, just 11 years later, it is just shy of $19 trillion and is projected to exceed $21 trillion before Obama leaves the White House in just over a year’s time of this writing.  That far exceeds the yearly GDP of The United States and is really dangerous.  At that rate of growth, it will become impossible very soon to ever pay it off and nobody is addressing that issue—except for a few Republicans—Trump being one of the loudest voices.   For me, it is the number one issue of the 2016 election.  Whoever the next president will be has a tremendously difficult task in front of them.  The Nation Debt is the biggest issue of our time—our nation will not survive another ten years of neglect without dealing with the massive problem it proposals to each and every one of us.  Our federal government has mismanaged our resources in a terrible way, and now we are going to pay hell for it.

The other thing that is realized upon watching that first Apprentice episode was that Barack Obama wouldn’t even be competitive in that show.  Donald Trump could walk into any government office or company right now and rattle off four or five big things that the organization could do to save a few bucks and become more profitable.   It doesn’t matter what it is—he knows enough about management to perform the task at any level of endeavor, from selling lemonade to closing multibillion dollar deals.  I’ve said it before and it’s truer now than ever, Obama couldn’t walk into a McDonald’s right now and manage a lunch rush.  He doesn’t understand the basics of management—you can see it on his face and in the things he says.  He is completely lost when it comes to management of resources in a capitalist culture.  He is a big government guy who simply spends other people’s money—like a trophy wife who spends on her husband’s credit card without understanding the value of the money or what it takes to get it.

The winner of that first season of Apprentice received a job with the Trump Organization and led the way under careful mentorship to developing the Trump Tower in Chicago.  He did such a good job that the Trump Organization gave him a year extension to his original one year contract.  As the construction of that massive effort commenced the winner directed efforts toward sales and marketing the endeavor which turned out to be a glorious success.   It is one of the great towers of the world and is one of the most spectacular things on the Chicago skyline.  I don’t think Obama could do anything in the Trump Organization.  On his own merits he wouldn’t be able to get a job because he’s not qualified for anything.  Obama can certainly sell, but it doesn’t take long for people to realize that there is nothing to back up the talk and in the private sector he’d lose his credibility quickly.

The President’s berating of Donald Trump in 2011 comes off sounding like the Roman emperor Nero making jokes and enjoying parties as his country burns.  Strictly from a financial view, what Obama and virtually every member of the media are doing is criminal—the theft and mismanagement of public resources.   Getting out of this mess will be one of the largest comebacks in the history of the world—and I don’t know that it’s possible.  I write here everyday because it’s one of the only things that I can do to help such a massive global problem.   I don’t charge money for the primary material because what would be the point—if our economy collapses and the value of the dollar with it—it doesn’t matter if you make millions of dollars if you lose the value of it in the process.   So I have literally written millions and millions of words on this blog site pointing out things that I intend to have an impact on our culture-and it works.  There are a lot of people who come to things late in their life and they seek answers—and I give answers or at least something to think about.  Donald Trump has written a lot of books, most of them 80,000 word publications.    If all the links on just this article are put together there are several books worth of information here that should guide the reader toward some level of prosperity—and it’s all done for free, because I want people to be more successful in their lives and the best way to do that is to understand the value of money.   Click on these links and it will become clear just how bad that National Debt really is.

In many ways I think only Donald Trump is qualified to be the next POTUS.  The situation is so severe that there just isn’t another person available who has the energy, connections, and understanding to perform the ominous task of getting our American economy back under control.  Both of my daughters were born during George Bush’s presidency (#41).  They like a lot of Millennials their age have never experienced a successful president in the United States.  Everyone during their entire lives for a quarter of a century has been losers in the White House.  They don’t have any memory of a Ronald Reagan, a John Kennedy, a Dwight Eisenhower, or a Calvin Cooledge.   They only know losers who would be personal failures if not for the White House glamour and glitz given to them by voters out of hope because they could at least talk a good game.   In real life, performance matters and Obama clearly doesn’t understand why.  If he watched and understood The Apprentice he might have been a better manager in the White House, but instead he insisted on socialism and government control of everything—and that just hasn’t worked.  He had no right to laugh or make fun of Donald Trump and the rest of the media were idiots for churning on the President for doing something they dared not do themselves.   Now we are in serious trouble and it will take a real fighter—and winner to get the United States out of it.  The Apprentice is old enough that most of the episodes are on YouTube so I’d suggest watching that show again knowing now things that many didn’t know then and think about the kind of problems that are facing our nation in 2016.  We won’t get another chance to fix it.  By clicking on the links within this article, a picture will become quite obvious and it all comes to a head in 2016’s election.  At the end of we can only hope that Donald Trump gets to say his famous line to many thousands of overpaid government workers and looters off the tax payer by telling them “they’re fired,” so that the job can be done correctly from the White House for maybe the first time in history.  It is the only way I see out of this mess and honestly the success of The Apprentice more than qualifies Trump to perform the task.  But by that same measure, Obama isn’t qualified to scalp tickets to a Bears game in Chicago from a street corner.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

Columbus Did Not Discover America: Indians are not “Native Americans”–understanding the infancy of archaeology

I’ve said it before, George Lucas has left his mark on the world not as a great filmmaker and creator of franchises like Star Wars and Indiana Jones—but on the world of archaeology and anthropology—which is what he originally wanted to be when he grew up.  Archaeology as a science is a very young profession.  It’s only just over a hundred years old as one of the big academic platforms of most universities.  I myself originally wanted to be an archaeologist—but pulled away from it when I realized that the women weren’t very attractive, the money was too  infrequent, and that most of the job was digging up junk in bad regions of the world then being restricted by university politics on what you could say about them.

   And for me, archaeology didn’t allow for guns to be fired while on the job—so I stepped away.   But many thousands of people didn’t essentially because they wanted to grow up and be like Indiana Jones.  This has allowed for some really good minds to enter the field and for money to find its way into excavations and television programming that otherwise wouldn’t have happened.  So it shouldn’t be shocking to many to hear broadcasts like this one below where lots of archaeological evidence is presented showing quite clearly that Minoans had settlements in the middle of a Tennessee region several thousand years ago—like up to eight thousand B.C.  Watch this!

It was really immature, and scientifically stupid to take the young field of archaeology and declare that everything discovered in the first half of the 20th Century guided largely by the Smithsonian would declare the history of the world for all time.   There just wasn’t enough evidence in the young field and not enough people doing the investigations.  To take a few finds from Howard Carter and declare for all time that “The West” understood the history of the world and that the case was closed to protect religious politics and university prestige from further discoveries was just a mistake.  There is a lot more to archaeology than that and our history as a human race.  The evidence is abundant that no history book is 100% correct.  It is really only because of George Lucas that further questions have been asked and thousands of Indiana Jones fans are running around the world uncovering that hidden past even when the politics of our societies is attempting to castigate them for doing so.

For instance, in the case of the above video, where it is quite clear that the Minoans were in America during a time well before Aristotle was having debates about individuality over collective Republicanism with Plato cultures were rising and falling in America many thousands of years before Columbus ever found a map of the ocean routes to what he thought was China from black market vendors in Calcutta that found itself hidden from the public in Portugal.  That’s a story I’ve told before, and is only relevant here because it points to the tip of an iceberg of basic archaeological foundations that are deservedly being tossed out the window as the evidence dictates.  Columbus didn’t discover America.  He only rediscovered it for Europe and the Roman Catholic Church—the rest of the world already knew about the “New World” and had been traveling there for a long time.

The first sign of evidence is that there are accents to Cherokee Indian speech that reflect regional infusion from the eastern Mediterranean cultures.  I often talk about the giants found in American mounds—people standing eight feet to nine feet tall who were in North America well before all the known Indian tribes now documented.  I have also written quite extensively of my disgust that the Miamisburg Mound near my home has been virtually untouched by modern science and had a massive government project set up around it preventing proper excavation techniques.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.  I have also written about my extreme disgust about what happened to the Nework Mound complex just east of Columbus, Ohio.  Of course Columbus is named after Christopher and was established to preserve the European version of historical discovery.  So the way early settlers around Columbus dealt with the strange mounds at Newark was to put a housing development right thought the middle of it, and then put a golf course right through the northern octagon.  The Newark sight is a massive archaeological site that has been mostly destroyed by the third major culture to inhabit its terrestrial placement.   I say third because the European migrants only  recently replaced the Hopewell and Adena cultures that had been second-handers to the primary culture that built the mounds and had artifacts that were clearly from the same region as the archaeology found in the Tennessee Valley.

I have even went so far to show in great detail how the entire city of Lexington, Kentucky was built on top of an ancient city that would have been much more at home in the Tigris and Euphrates, area than what is typically associated with the American Indian.   I have covered the mysterious archaeological evidence found inside a major mound for which the center of downtown Cincinnati was built on top of, and is presently found in the nearby museum—mysteriously placed but completely unidentifiable by current scientific understanding.   A very good argument that the current highway system of I-75 is one of the most mysterious lines of road built anywhere in the world could be made.  Not only did it give us Kentucky Fried Chicken during its construction but it shows an almost human memory of a trade route that used to connect all these archaeological regions across a vast span of American frontier thousands of years before known history has attributed anything logical occurring before the nomad culture of the Indians were discovered in North America from 1492 to 1850.

A study of Indian myths and legends are all that’s left of an obvious advanced culture that spanned the entire world before the philosophy of Confucius emphasized personal and governmental morality in China during 551 – 479 BC.  There were cultures in America referred to only in the Bible’s missing Book of Enoch that had been around for many millennia and had risen and fallen following the Vico cycle.  The Indians were obviously part of that cycle and were capturing that earlier period through their mythologies, which they interpreted the best they could as a second-handed society of nomads.

So there is a lot of work to do, and without George Lucas, I don’t think there would be so much independent investigation which is uncovering all these marvelous revelations occurring outside of academia.  I’m not against academia, they are most poised to do the work, but they have not been open to the evidence pouring in from finds all over the world, and they have too much of a relationship with government censorship obviously motivated to preserve their version of history—likely to protect the religious foundations of their societies, whether that be European pride, or American Christianity.  Many of the most important archaeological sites around the world are off-limits because they exists in war-torn areas always brimming with political mismanagement that often looks to be to be deliberate.  Whether it’s the ISIS destruction of ancient cities in the Middle East, or the communism which has hidden Cambodia from legitimate investigation by a sex trade industry that flourishes to keep legitimate investigators away from the vile horror often associated with Phnom Penh.

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2013/12/world/cambodia-child-sex-trade/

Communism is a big part of the problem; try getting a dig permit in China where there is a lot of untouched archaeological research that needs to be conducted—which looks to reflect much of what has been found in North America.  Look at Central and South America where poverty from socialism has destroyed those economies leaving people desperate to make a basic living for themselves.   Only really seasoned travelers like Josh Gates—whom I think is a wonderful person often seen on the Travel Channel, can go to such places and resist the temptation to embark on the debauchery of a people who would sell their entire futures in exchange for a piece of bread—then stay for years studying archaeological evidence that no university in the civilized world wants to publish, for fear of it tarnishing their relationships with the British Museum, the Louvre, or the Smithsonian.  In the United States we can’t even get a reasonable excavation of the Miamisburg Mound by nearby University of Dayton, or the Great Serpent Mound by Ohio University, Athens, or the University of Cincinnati—let alone why no legitimate research into Shambhala in the Himalayas is taking place.

  The Dalai Lama can’t even have an afterlife without the Chinese Communist Party demanding that he reincarnate by their direction.  (Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up).  So having a legitimate scientific investigation into Shambhala is off-limits because of the communism of China and its impact on the surrounding countries.  The communist Chinese do not want to know what happened in their culture 8 to 10 thousand years ago.  They are more worried about the Dalai Lama’s afterlife.  Not even the great Ohio State can tell us Hebrew-like artifacts were found at Newark, which is only a 45 minutes drive to the east in a pretty nice part of town relative to the rest of the world’s archaeology.  There’s even a Wendy’s restaurant at the front door to the historic site.  But Ohio State can tell us how they plan to win another national football championship.  No really serious investigation occurs there but to attribute the site to the Hopewell Indians descending from the Archaic period.

http://www.joshuagates.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/12/world/asia/chinas-tensions-with-dalai-lama-spill-into-the-afterlife.html?_r=0]

Do I believe that it was Minoans who were in America during that Archaic period?  I think there is lots of evidence that shows that they, or a culture that either spawned them, or the other way around was directly involved in trade between China, North America, and the Middle East likely 10,000 years ago and many of the cultures of that period have either been built over by successors or remain hidden by years of erosion.  They are right in front of our faces, but we do not see it because of modern religion and government vice.  The cause for instance of Cambodian sex trafficking is their authoritarian rule and history with communism.  As a French colony—which is a first world socialist utopia in Europe—the people were conquered and left to communism, which crushed their economy leaving families to sell their children to the sex trade.  The West keeps it going because they want access to the young virgin children which prevents any real science from occurring there by guilt of association.  Anybody with a trip to Phnom Penh on their passport feels they have to explain to people at a museum fundraiser that they were only there for “work” not sex with children. So no legitimate scientist wants to spend years studying Ankor Wat, but for the occasional photographer who goes there to get the fantastic pictures of a culture long gone and mysteriously sophisticated. The ones who do don’t get much of a voice on the world stage of academia—by design.  We are led to believe that such societies were not connected to places like Cahokia on the Mississippi River in North America, or the Tigres in the Middle East—but was a standalone culture that was a self-contained Hindu religion shut off from the world by terrain.

The lesson here of course is that one century of archaeology was not enough.  We really can’t formulate the history of the human race with just a few decades of a young scientific field.  Thanks to George Lucas, he pulled the restrictor plate off the science through imagination and now there are a lot of people like Josh Gates exploring the world living out their internal fantasies of being like Indiana Jones.  And that’s a great thing—because we deserve to understand who were are and where we are going.  But one thing is certain, Christopher Columbus did not discover the “New World” and the Indians were not “Native Americans.”  They came from someplace else as well and took over sites from a culture that had risen and fallen in the United States well before they built their first mythology for Tirawa—The One Above from the Pawnee Indian tribe.  Following the Vico cycle, the Pawnee like all the others were second-handers to a culture that had receded into a primitive state only to become nomads once again leaving a culture to clamor at the truth only through myths and legends.  But our true history is still being uncovered—and established archaeology is only just now getting started.  The history books will not be complete for several thousand years going forward—that is if we can avoid the Vico cycle ourselves.  That is the challenge of our present states.  Hopefully we can learn from that hidden history before it’s too late for us as well and we are reduced to a fragmented regional memory of a future country who thinks they understand the human race because they uncovered a copy of Star Wars under 50 feet of soil and reported to the government then that they have it all figured out.

To substantiate what I have said, click all the links in the text above and you will find dear reader enough free information to fill several books.  Then watch all the videos and you will discover enough evidence to last a lifetime, and it will change how you see everything.  I promise–all you have to do is look and read for yourself.  The evidence is more than abundant.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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