Tag: overmanwarrior

Mermaids at the Newport Aquarium: Thank a capitalist like Steiner for conservation awareness

Many think that because I’m a conservative that I naturally do not support conservation. These are the same types who think that the issue of slavery was only a white on black occurrence occurring in America from the 1600s until the mid 1800s. Of course slavery was a much larger social problem involving all races and sexes of that particular time period and it was America who was the first to take a moral stand against it—to such an extent that a war was fought over it—led by Republicans. The same type of manipulation has occurred to make conservatives into villains regarding conservation—and largely it has gone unchallenged. That is because the answer to the conservation question is again that it is capitalism which is the biggest spokesman for the conservation movement which is much to the frustration of the bleeding heart liberal types. So it is with some surprise that people learn of my love and support of the Newport Aquarium.

The primary reason that I am so excited about the upcoming Liberty Center development being constructed as we speak in my community of Liberty Township is because it is a Steiner project. The Steiner group twenty years ago envisioned a way to save the embattled city of Newport, Kentucky with a brilliant new development on the river built around a new state-of-the art aquarium. That aquarium was a game changer and to this day is worth an out-of-state visit just to see. Situated across from the Cincinnati skyline, it has changed life on the banks of the Ohio River for the culture of the Cincinnati region and it all started with the capitalist Steiner.

 

Years later during a week in mid October 2014 the Newport Aquarium brought in the Weeki Wachee Mermaids from the popular Florida resort to perform in an extravaganza that I thought was incredibly wonderful. To the music of the Little Mermaid from Disney thousands upon thousands of little girls lined up to meet the beautiful mermaids and see them perform in the Coral Reef tank—which was absolutely glorious. Capitalism was on display at its finest. Of all the little girls present many will find they have an appreciation of sea life because of that experience and will likely carry it with them their entire lives. Two Disney films dominate the exhibits in a subtle way at the Newport Aquarium, Finding Nemo and of course The Little Mermaid. Disney created the gateway into such stories by creating the mythology. Steiner and his group brought that mythology to reality. And the wonderful Weeki Wachee swimmers from Florida and their capitalist endeavor their brought mythology to life for profit which further intensifies the experience for countless lives touched by their endeavors.

Leaving the Newport Aquarium after seeing the exhibit of mermaids on a sunny day in October with the great Ohio River rolling by just feet away, with Mitchells, Barnes and Noble and the AMC movie theater looming above, it was the vision of the Steiner group which brought this experience to so many people and God love him for it. It took a lot of headache to bring that vision to reality and I am thankful that he did so twenty years ago. My brother is a diver at the Newport Aquarium and it has been an important place for my family for a number of years. I simply love the place, but without Steiner—the capitalist—it would have never happened. The Newport Aquarium is one of the best exhibits of its kind in the world and has maintained that status into its second decade. And it’s still going strong and is able to bring in talent like the Weeki Wachee Mermaids from such a distance to bring a bit of Disney World to the Midwest.

 

http://www.newportaquarium.com/What-to-do-in-cincinnati/Aquarium-Events/Mermaids.aspx?cid=ppc_000161

 

At the aquarium in Newport, conservation is on full display. It is evident why manufacturers would want to refrain from careless drilling, over deforestation, and a destruction of the earth’s natural resources by seeing the exhibits. Science driven by capitalism is the best conservation method that there is, and the Newport Aquarium is the perfect example of such an endeavor. I could sit in front of their exhibits for hours and just watch the animals—and appreciate the unique circumstances which made them possible as a life form. Without a profit motive however, there would be no Newport Aquarium, or a Newport Levee experience. Profit drives science and conservation. A lack of such formulas gives you the Middle East—sand, poverty, and stupidity. The Newport Aquarium is culture at its finest—it brings out the best in people and is a wonderful, magnificent creation of the Steiner group.

 

With the same epic vision the Steiner group is bringing its latest creation to Liberty Center. I expect that complex to dwarf what has occurred at the Newport on the Levee development. And because of the well-designed shopping complex the very popular outdoor store Cabela’s is moving in across the street on Liberty Way. I can’t think of any aspect of modern culture that most brings conservation to the minds of the masses than such a shopping experience at Cabela’s—an outlet dedicated to the outdoor experience and the preservation of those outdoors for future lives. Without Steiner, there would be no Cabela’s. And without Cabela’s the Bass Pro Shops down the road wouldn’t be expanding the way they are by necessity of competition. Because of those two retail outlets millions of people will become inspired to not only participate in outdoor activities, but to preserve them through the education programs that come as natural off-shoots of those shopping experiences. Because of the Steiner group and their use of capitalism to create profit driven experiences, conservation awareness will be greatly expanded dwarfing the great work done at the Newport Aquarium so many years ago even into the present.

If there are little ones in your family now is the time to see the Weekie Wachee Mermaids at the Newport Aquarium. I’ve seen the show in Florida and it was wonderful, but the Newport Aquarium provides a much more up-close and personal experience because of the tubular design of the display in the Coral Reef section. It was quite majestic. It was a brilliant move by both the Weekie Wachee crew and the Aquarium to pull those two elements together. They are playing only through this upcoming weekend, so make sure to see it. Better yet, take a day off work and visit during the day when the crowds are much less. Take your kids out of school for the experience. They’ll learn a whole lot more at the Newport Aquarium than they will in school, that’s for sure, and the experience you’ll share as a family will be unrivaled. It is that good, and is just one more reminder of how wonderful capitalism can be when it’s used properly in the hands of wonderful people in the Steiner Group. Their creativity and desire for quality has given thousands an experience in their own back yards worthy of a week-long vacation to a distant land. Only it’s right there at Newport on the Levee. So take your kids, eat at their fine restaurant, pet some sharks and thank a capitalist for the enriching experience.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean and why justice comes from a bullwhip

A recent comment about my site here, Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom contemplated my use of bullwhips and attempted to associate it with slavery in the typical progressive fashion. Of course I’ve heard all this before and each time I hear it only inspires me more to expose progressivism for the destructive force that it is more intensely. One of the reasons that bullwhip work is degraded as sadomasochism and instruments of slavery is due to this progressive marketing campaign that wants to divide up everything into just a few categories, fairness for women, fairness for people of color, fairness for the poor, and fairness for other countries. Of course that fairness is always defined by a political class of elites hungry for power and inspired by the communist movement of the 20th century. But that is always ignored. Instead this is the kind of intelligence we are to contend with:

‘Justice comes with the crack of the whip,” is the tag line. And he wields bullwhips as a hobby. Naw, he’s no overseer. What connotations could I even imply?

 

The implication there of course is that as an “overman” I want to be a slave owner ruling over a flock of black slaves. The bullwhip is part of the slave master tradition to the thinking of these political marionettes. But they would be wrong, in fact, they are part of a massive cover-up which seeks to highlight the effects of slavery in America—inherited from Europe—and the type of slavery that Thomas Jefferson himself attacked when he could—which was the start of the United States Marines. That slavery started it all in the modern world and involved Muslims in North Africa. The information and statistics are staggering of how many white people were enslaved by Muslims of color and were articulated in the 2004 book Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean. Read about the study conducted in that book below:

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new study suggests that a million or more European Christians were enslaved by Muslims in North Africa between 1530 and 1780 – a far greater number than had ever been estimated before.

 

Robert Davis, professor of history at Ohio State University, developed a unique methodology to calculate the number of white Christians who were enslaved along Africa’s Barbary Coast, arriving at much higher slave population estimates than any previous studies had found.

 

Most other accounts of slavery along the Barbary Coast didn’t try to estimate the number of slaves, or only looked at the number of slaves in particular cities, Davis said. Most previously estimated slave counts have thus tended to be in the thousands, or at most in the tens of thousands. Davis, by contrast, has calculated that between 1 million and 1.25 million European Christians were captured and forced to work in North Africa from the 16th to 18th centuries.

 

Davis’s new estimates appear in the book Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800 (Palgrave Macmillan).

“Much of what has been written gives the impression that there were not many slaves and minimizes the impact that slavery had on Europe,” Davis said. “Most accounts only look at slavery in one place, or only for a short period of time. But when you take a broader, longer view, the massive scope of this slavery and its powerful impact become clear.”

Davis said it is useful to compare this Mediterranean slavery to the Atlantic slave trade that brought black Africans to the Americas. Over the course of four centuries, the Atlantic slave trade was much larger – about 10 to 12 million black Africans were brought to the Americas. But from 1500 to 1650, when trans-Atlantic slaving was still in its infancy, more white Christian slaves were probably taken to Barbary than black African slaves to the Americas, according to Davis.

“One of the things that both the public and many scholars have tended to take as given is that slavery was always racial in nature – that only blacks have been slaves. But that is not true,” Davis said. “We cannot think of slavery as something that only white people did to black people.”

During the time period Davis studied, it was religion and ethnicity, as much as race, that determined who became slaves.

“Enslavement was a very real possibility for anyone who traveled in the Mediterranean, or who lived along the shores in places like Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, and even as far north as England and Iceland,” he said.

Pirates (called corsairs) from cities along the Barbary Coast in north Africa – cities such as Tunis and Algiers – would raid ships in the Mediterranean and Atlantic, as well as seaside villages to capture men, women and children. The impact of these attacks were devastating – France, England, and Spain each lost thousands of ships, and long stretches of the Spanish and Italian coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants. At its peak, the destruction and depopulation of some areas probably exceeded what European slavers would later inflict on the African interior.

Although hundreds of thousands of Christian slaves were taken from Mediterranean countries, Davis noted, the effects of Muslim slave raids was felt much further away: it appears, for example, that through most of the 17th century the English lost at least 400 sailors a year to the slavers.

Even Americans were not immune. For example, one American slave reported that 130 other American seamen had been enslaved by the Algerians in the Mediterranean and Atlantic just between 1785 and 1793.

Davis said the vast scope of slavery in North Africa has been ignored and minimized, in large part because it is on no one’s agenda to discuss what happened.

The enslavement of Europeans doesn’t fit the general theme of European world conquest and colonialism that is central to scholarship on the early modern era, he said. Many of the countries that were victims of slavery, such as France and Spain, would later conquer and colonize the areas of North Africa where their citizens were once held as slaves. Maybe because of this history, Western scholars have thought of the Europeans primarily as “evil colonialists” and not as the victims they sometimes were, Davis said.

Davis said another reason that Mediterranean slavery has been ignored or minimized has been that there have not been good estimates of the total number of people enslaved. People of the time – both Europeans and the Barbary Coast slave owners – did not keep detailed, trustworthy records of the number of slaves. In contrast, there are extensive records that document the number of Africans brought to the Americas as slaves.

So Davis developed a new methodology to come up with reasonable estimates of the number of slaves along the Barbary Coast. Davis found the best records available indicating how many slaves were at a particular location at a single time. He then estimated how many new slaves it would take to replace slaves as they died, escaped or were ransomed.

“The only way I could come up with hard numbers is to turn the whole problem upside down – figure out how many slaves they would have to capture to maintain a certain level,” he said. “It is not the best way to make population estimates, but it is the only way with the limited records available.”

Putting together such sources of attrition as deaths, escapes, ransoming, and conversions, Davis calculated that about one-fourth of slaves had to be replaced each year to keep the slave population stable, as it apparently was between 1580 and 1680. That meant about 8,500 new slaves had to be captured each year. Overall, this suggests nearly a million slaves would have been taken captive during this period. Using the same methodology, Davis has estimated as many as 475,000 additional slaves were taken in the previous and following centuries.

The result is that between 1530 AD and 1780 AD there were almost certainly 1 million and quite possibly as many as 1.25 million white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast.

 

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/whtslav.htm

Of course nobody ever hears about this because under the re-education so fashionable under progressive interpretation, the slavery of whites doesn’t fit the communist motivated, anti-American imperialism that is the real target of the attack by those who want to destroy America and the capitalism that drives its economic power. So the slavery argument has been captured to only discuss the practice in America. What is ignored is that once America had freed itself during the Revolution it immediately went to work to free all men which started the Civil War. After the Civil War was a period of westward expansion which highlights the era typically rendered by the cinematic western. It is from this time that the bullwhip came into play not as a plantation guardian, but of individuals facing down the vast open spaces of the American West.

 

The tag line I use at this site is a quote from my own 2004 novel The Symposium of Justice where the main character Cliffhanger fights off modern slavery by destroying a mind control device designed to interfere with the thinking of a town’s citizens and guide them in the proper political direction. The use of bullwhips in the story has nothing to do with slavery or standing over other people—it is about freeing people so that they can think. The use of the bullwhip is to use force to punish bad guys for attempting to enslave civilization. My use of the bullwhip in that story context is to free people, not to enslave them.

Those who chose to revise history are far more dangerous than the perceived slave master who uses a bullwhip to control the black slaves at their southern plantation. The minds of these critics shown at the beginning of this article are made by modern progressives who make movies like Dajango Unchained and the ignorant masses believe wholeheartedly that the filmmaker Tarentino is a scholar who knows much about the slavery argument. But he doesn’t. For those who do know, slavery wasn’t a black or white condition, it was a product of the times, and white people were just as vulnerable to enslavement as blacks were—yet this is never discussed even though the evidence is quite extensive.

 

For my own lessons in history it is my proposal that it takes an “overman” to see past the limitations imposed on mankind through thousands of years motivated exclusively by ignorance. It takes such a position to understand why a 2004 book written about white slavery in North Africa by a professor of history at Ohio State was ignored—because it didn’t fit the progressive definitions meant to attack American imperialism. It is also meant to ignore the role that Muslims played in that slavery—as Islam is a religion that progressives are advocating as a volatile assailant against the bourgeoisie of world power, the North American continent. Those progressive definitions come straight out of the books of Karl Marx and have no other grounding in reality. To see such contradictions not only takes a student of history, but someone willing to step outside of the current human limitations of personal sensitivity and political concern to see the truth. And the truth is, America freed their slaves, but the rest of the world didn’t. Of those other places in the world that promoted slavery so intensely, it was the Muslims who then as they do now, seek to rule over mankind with an iron fist. For me, the bullwhip is a symbol of the American West and the only time in world history that a nation freed itself from a tyrannical past. That symbol needs to be propped up for the world to see so that they too can rise up against their slave masters with a projection of strength that can metaphorically come only from a bullwhip.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

The Reach Out Lakota Charity Dinner: Invasion of the “Latte Sipping Prostitutes”

When you want to know what’s wrong with politics all you have to do is pull off the masks of events like the recent Reach Out Lakota charity event to know what it is. Sponsored by the progressive oriented Chamber members it was a dinner pitched in the following manner:

Imagine having a wonderful evening out with friends including cocktails, dinner and entertainment. For dinner, you and your friends will be seated at your table of ten, decorated in the theme or motif of your choice. And, you’ll be waited on by a TV news anchor or a morning drive DJ or the Police Chief or other celebrity! Now imagine having this much fun as you raise money for Reach Out Lakota and your community! No need to imagine…it will happen on Thursday, October 9, 2014 and you can be a part of this fabulous evening at the Savannah Center in West Chester.

I know most of the “celebrities” listed below who were the waiters at the event and can report to them that this is exactly why I don’t do many public appearances any more. Just as in the past when it comes time to rise up to fight against an issue, these types of crossing of the swords events prevent clear articulation of the crises at hand—which I’ll explain in a moment.

  • Justin Jeffre – 98 Degrees

  • Adam Marshall – WCPO 9 reporter

  • Karin Johnson – WLWT 5 reporter

  • Perry Schaible – WKRC Local 12 reporter

  • Kristen Bitonte – Liberty Township Administrator

  • Judi Boyko – West Chester Township Administrator

  • Margie Conditt – State Representative (District 52)

  • Joe Hinson – President/CEO at West Chester • Liberty Chamber Alliance

  • Ben Dibble – Lakota Board of Education Member

  • Lynda O’Connor – Lakota Board of Education Member

  • Julie Shaffer – Lakota Board of Education Member

  • Tom Ferrell – Liberty Township Trustee

  • Joel Herzog – Assistant Chief of West Chester Police Department

  • Rick Prinz – Assistant Chief of West Chester Fire Department

  • TC Rogers – Butler County Commissioner

  • Roger Reynolds – Butler County Auditor

  • Nancy Nix – Butler County Treasurer

  • Mary Swain – Butler County Clerk of Courts

  • Steve Mayhugh – Director of West Chester Library/MidPointe

  • Kevin Joseph – CEO at West Chester Hospital

  • Tony Pike – Former UC Bearcats and NFL quarterback

  • Paul Heintz – MOJO Running

  • David Armbruster – ‘Id Man’ from 700 WLW Reds pregame

  • Becky Wilber – CTI Restaurants

  • Todd Wilber – CTI Restaurants

http://reachoutlakota.org/celebritydinner.html

What the Reach Out Lakota people are doing is a good thing, and many of the names on that list—many whom I personally like—people like Karin Johnston, T.C. Rogers, Roger Reynolds, and Todd Wilber truly mean well. Such events are nice occasions where you put your political differences away from people like Lynda O’Conner, Julie Schafer, and Ben Dibble—all from the Lakota school board, along with Joe Hinson of the Chamber Alliance and break bread with them for a good cause. However, and this is true of many people on that list—when it comes time to stand against those people and fight them on an issue, the resolve is not there later to perform the task because of these events.

Many hearing the news reports from the event would think that the Lakota school system was raising money for itself. It wasn’t well reported that the Lakota Reach Out program has nothing to do with the government school itself, but was started by a group of Lakota moms who wanted to help some of the down and out within the community with charity. But, when such events of a high-profile such as this are performed, Lakota gets the credit which is why the school board members were there—to mooch as second handers off the positive public relations generated.

During the last four tax increase attempts and of course all future attempts–the first coming in the 2016/2017 time frame–events like this take the edge away from those who don’t want tax increases imposed on them. People like Julie Schafer who ride the coat tails of success by attending such events and feel privileged to hang out with people like Todd Wilber sipping wine and eating fine food will be the first to rally her tax fanatical supporters into boycotts against Wilber’s businesses if he doesn’t come out in favor of a levy attempt. I know it, because I’ve seen it first hand. People like Wilber have no choice but to play nicely because at events like the Lakota Reach Out program charity dinners break down the barriers of differences by their very nature, which is why all the usual villains of progressive influence are at the head of the organization. The goal for them is to take the edge off those who would otherwise fight their desires.

I often make reference to these types of people—the progressive manipulators at the front of these social orders as “latte sipping prostitutes” and here’s why—because there is much evil conducted at these types of dinners hidden behind the mask of goodness which translates out into a general degradation of our political, economic, and moral social manifestation. The organizers often prostitute themselves to progressive causes in trade for second handed appeal by way of social recognition. What gets traded away is the ethical position to stand against progressive tax increases and corrosive social policies proposed through organizations like the Chamber Alliance. Just as a prostitute losses the ability to stand for moral causes because they sell their bodies for money, the latte sipping prostitutes of such events lose their moral ground when Lakota schools proposes their future tax increases because the public has seen people like Wilber, Reynolds, and Rogers breaking bread with Schafer, Dibble, and O’Conner. And how did they see it, because Karin Johnston, and Adam Marshall brought it straight to their eyes and it will always be remembered. Just as it is uncomfortable for a prostitute to see one of their customers at a shopping center with their family after the dirty act is done and payment was accepted, the realization comes often too late at how paralyzed the prostitute is in such moments. They can’t go up to the spouse of their customer and report the moral depravity of the marriage, because they have no moral ground to do so—as they were the advocates of such an illicit act from the start. What might have been an enjoyable experience turns out to be a vice later when a moral position is required. At that time the names on the above list will be in paralysis. They might give money to someone like me as a mercenary to fight on their behalf—but they will also seek to keep the whores quiet when they start demanding more money through means of extortion. When the latte sipping prostitutes howl out in anger for more money, more attention, and more respect, those who use those whores are unable to stand against them because they crossed the line and lost the ability to cast moral judgment against such social disgraces.

It is for that reason that I have not been to social functions much in 2014. It is easy to see what is going on and what the strategy of the other side desires to accomplish. What is more important than the immediate gratification of wine banging and laughs shared for the benefit of the misfortunate in our community is the ability to stand on a moral principle when all the other vagrants have been hushed into silence by the latte sipping prostitutes. Lakota the school system is one of those whore houses—and most of the people who support it are the whores. They attach themselves to good groups like Lakota Out Reach just as a whore couples with a successful customer for all the reasons one can think of—but most prominently to gain emotional leverage at a latter date that will prevent action against evil when it matters most

It is important to remember that what makes us are not the friendships we maintain through fake smiles and forced acceptance of values that are compromises at best. It is in our ability to stand for something—otherwise society will fall for anything. The reason that politics in our society is such a disgrace is that it is filled with these kinds of events populated by these types of people. Strong candidates newly elected soon find after a few years of this type of sword crossing that they lose their ability to stand against the whores who come into their life nearly by force and plop themselves into their laps with offerings of delight and friendship. But at the end of the day what is learned always too late is that there is a price for that friendship—and at that point the ability to stand against injustice is long gone—pissed away like the fine wine drank at events like the Lakota Out Reach dinner.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Lakota’s Standards Based Report Cards: Teaching children to carry brown bags of beer and purchase lottery tickets

Lakota like many other Ohio schools is experimenting with a new progressive education standard which seeks to remove the value of a grade and replace it with a new kind of report card. The essence of this new grading system is called standards based reporting, and features a measure of whether or not a student has obtained a level of competency in a learned task. The abandonment of the traditional grading system is the removal of quality from education which is the overall intent. Since modern education cannot properly measure quality through the top down learning structure assessed by a grading system to determine exceptional results from mediocre results, government schools are moving toward this new standard. Here is what it is and how it’s measured as reported by Lakota schools in southern Ohio.

STANDARDS BASED REPORT CARD

Lakota is pilot-testing a new kind of report card in several schools this year. Although the test of the “standards-based report card” is only in third grade at Cherokee; fourth grade at Heritage and sixth grade at Woodland, we want to share information about these report cards with all parents who have children in elementary school. This is part of a continuing weekly series of information about the new reports cards and the pilot test.

What is a “standards-based report card?”

 

A traditional report card (A, B, C, etc.) shows a single grade a student earned for all the combined work done – tests, quizzes, homework, classroom work, etc. — in one subject area, such as math, science or social studies. The purpose of the new report card being tested is to instead communicate student progress toward an end goal – mastering a specific learning standard. A standards-based report card identifies specific skills and content that a student is expected to master while in a certain grade. Then it uses a 1, 2, 3 grading system to show the child’s progress toward that specific standard.  A “1” means a student has not yet mastered the skill or content. A “2” means a student is making good progress towards mastery. A “3” means a student has mastered the particular skill or content.

It’s important to understand what a standard is. One standard for fourth grade, in English/Language Arts, is: “Compare and contrast the point of view from which different stories are narrated, including the difference between first- and third-person narrations.” When a student demonstrates he or she understands different points of view in story narration, and can compare and contrast those points, the student would earn a “3” grade, demonstrating mastery of that particular standard.

 

That all sounds very “educational” until it is realized that the entire education system will have to be dumbed down to allow for such acceptance gates of understanding as opposed to the traditional method of not only measuring knowledge, but the quality of that knowledge. This new standard only shows that a student has an understanding, but it ignores the quality of that knowledge. In the old method, an “A” stated that a person understood information at an exceptional level, a “B” at a moderate level, and a “C” meant one had a passable understanding. Anything less meant that a student was failing to grapple the information.

What has been abandoned is the quality of understanding during learning and therefore the expectation level of education in general. Under the cover of improvement, public education has found a way to protect itself from the increasing pressure of attaching federal money to funding based on performance when their government employees are failing to actually reach children by disguising the charade through removing the quality portion of education. They have done this by eliminating value judgment in a traditional grading system.

 

For those concerned about Common Core methods used in government schools, standards based report cards are attached directly to Common Core. The path to these teaching methods is inevitable failure in every category of human endeavor. This is why the most prudent method of combating these maniacal despots is to remove your children from all government schools and waive the free baby-sitting service. Parents who can afford to should home school their children because it is the only way to remove these progressive influences from a child’s education.

 

Government schools will continue for the next decade to reach for air in their struggle to stay relevant creating feel-good programs like these standards based report cards to repackage their failures into bright shiny boxes. But what’s at the core of Common Core is the embrace of the mediocre, the un-exceptional, and the lackluster to make the “common” the only standard that matters in a government run society infatuated with fairness for their democratic masses—the otherwise lazy, contemptuous, and the valueless.

 

Standards based report cards are the latest attempt to avoid any kind of measurement that actually expects learning to be achieved by the masses of children attending government schools. It is meant to camouflage failure with garments of success to conceal the rotten core that is at the heart of public education. It is meant to make future products of government schools even worse than they are today—thoughtless malcontents who laugh at every Beavis and Butt Head joke, but have no sense of wonder at a shooting star—other than to make a wish and pray for a winning lottery ticket.

 

I normally get gas for my vehicles during off times, when there are fewer people at the gas station during the day while the rest of the world is busy. I don’t like to get gas in the morning when most everyone is up and off to a job of some kind. But recently I had to, so I stood in line at 6:30 AM and watched ten people in front of me purchase gas, coffee, donuts and lottery tickets. If you wrapped all the minds of those ten people into a single person, you might have had enough intellectual power to generate a small pocket flashlight. But nothing else. Those are the products of public education as they stand today under the old grading system. Now, thanks to Common Core, those same types of people will only become dumber. But one thing that will increase will be lottery ticket sales. Out of those ten people seen at Mark Sennett’s UDF store in the affluent Liberty Township corner of 747 and Princeton Road, where people make reasonably high level incomes and have decent educations—relatively speaking, 4 out of 10 people bought lottery tickets hoping for a jack pot to free them of their financial bonds to productivity. Under the new standards based report cards, that future number will likely be 10 out of 10—along with a pack of cigarettes and a brown bag bottle of beer in the morning. That will be the result of these education changes.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Life Under a Blood Moon: Zombies of exsistance and shadows of illusion

What a treat it was to be on a motorcycle in the cool morning air on October 8, 2014 to see a “blood moon” setting through patches of intense flog as the sun was rising. A lunar eclipse occurred on that day which is a rare event. I happen to live in a time zone where the sun was rising as the moon was setting at the highest point of the eclipse leaving the phenomena known as a blood moon. It was a Halloween oriented sensation accentuated by the motorcycle ride. I felt lucky enough to be up at that hour to see such a rare thing, but to also be on a motorcycle exposed to the various elements made it more memorable.

A blood moon is caused by the moon being on the exact opposite end of the earth in relation to the sun. The blood color is caused by the shadow of the earth cast against the surface of the moon. It’s infrequent that the position of the moon is in that particular location at the same time that the earth is positioned around the sun to cast such a shadow through space. It’s a fairly epic event if the science is considered. When that sensation is included to the man-made machinery of a motorcycle and the natural low-hovering dense fog coming from the thick cool air—it is an overwhelming sensation. Just days prior a massive storm came through my area saturating the ground with heavy rain that was still trying to escape back into the sky through the evaporation process. But with the weak rays of the sun during these fall months, there wasn’t enough energy to pull that moisture back into the formation of clouds. That leaves all those escapees of water molecules stuck in limbo in the form of fog until the next sunrise can finish the job on the following day. Because of all these elements together, it was a picturesque morning to ride a motorcycle that even the best Hollywood cinematographer couldn’t have conceived.

Yet in the cars sitting in traffic with me an additional element was present that was even more Halloween-like—the drivers were oblivious to these miracles. They sat stiff armed to their steering wheels zoned into their present condition of selling their day to employment like zombies seeking the blood of their next victim. Not a soul seemed inclined to view the blood moon through their windows as the fog hazed lazily on the horizon. Their minds were otherwise consumed.

Riding motorcycles has a way of heightening all the senses, so noticing such a thing had a more dramatic effect. But it had been a long time since I had been in the presence of so many people who were clearly tuned-out to the miracles of life. I was as alone as though I were on a deserted island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean without another person close by for hundreds of miles.

That suited me just fine. The blood moon seemed to understand as it hovered above the fog like a ghost that had once lived but was otherwise obscure, maintaining the ability to view the world while being invisible to the daily happenings of existence. But it isn’t we who are the ghosts, and brain-dead zombies. It is those moving about under the light of the blood moon, and the fog in the cool morning air that are unaware of the world around them in the same fashion that insects have no ideal that a human being is sitting nearby aware of their every move.

I thought of all the times I fished insects out of my swimming pool during the summer. From the perspective of the drowning insects, it must seem like a miracle to them to have a strange mass pull their bodies out of the water to the safety of a pool edge. To them, my saving them was a miracle—I gave them another day or two of life and they were probably grateful for about a fraction of a second. The same consciousness was apparent in the morning traffic of the blood moon. Like the insects, the people were unaware of the world above them, only that they had to get to work, to drop off their children at school, at the day care, and what radio station they wanted to tune in to. They were concerned about their coffee, and the temperature inside their rolled up windows and stared like zombies forward toward their work day and the trading of time for money.

Soon the blood moon was gone and the sun was up and the fog ran for the sky. The world of the night, the fog and the blood moon was gone to history, just as most of our lives rise and fall in the blink of an eye casting illusions to the world that appear to be one thing but are caused by something else. To the insects of the world they look up at such blood moons and think that the surface of the strange orb floating in the sky turned red. But what they don’t know is that the cause of the effect is the earth, not the moon and the change in hue is related directly to the sun which is stationed firmly in its place within the solar system floating around the Milky Way like a clock gear heading for destiny. The cause of the light cast upon our own lives is often obscured by shadows and our appearance often appears to be something that it is not. But for a brief morning in October of 2014 under a blood moon, there was honesty to humanity that cast insight beyond the illusions found in the light of day. That even with all the miracles of science and the scope of activity that made the blood moon, mankind was still insect-like in their perception of reality and curiosity about their environment.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

The Curse of Fort Seven Mile: Cliffhanger returns in an epic new way

A few years ago I made mention that I was working on a new book titled The Trial of Fletcher Finnegan, and that it would be ready for public consumption in around 5 years. That is still a goal I am working toward. However, changes to the publishing industry and the general market place dictate a more entrepreneurial approach. My publisher for Tail of the Dragon went out of business last year leaving me without a means of distribution in a traditional sense and I had so many requests for an uploaded version which my publisher didn’t offer that it caused me to re-evaluate the situation. I have been and will always be a physical book type of person—however, the industry certainly has moved away from that supply model. So while I work on the various means of distribution for my past works and pave the way for the future endeavors I have found a much-needed bridge to test out the market and give fans what they really want. For me right now, and filled in my email box from most of the people who know me as either friends, family, or acquaintances they will be delighted to know that this new endeavor will be essentially book two of the Cliffhanger series titled, The Curse of Fort Seven Mile.

For several years—nearly a decade now I have had frequent requests to return to the events of Fort Seven Mile and the vigilante antics of Cliffhanger—which is what the Trial of Fletcher Finnegan is to be about. However, as I’ve outlined the story there is a very ripe period that can fill volumes of material all on its own. I have said for quite some time that this blog site are my personal notes for these future stories. I share them with the public because there are things today that people can learn from and help navigate their lives. However, putting those ideals into a story context is another matter and is what I am going to do with these new Cliffhanger stories.

The plan is to publish a chapter each week of these further Cliffhanger stories and make them available for digital upload. For readers here they will essentially get the material of this blog site integrated into a narrative that is exciting and fun. For instance the first chapter consists of a labor union president for the Fort Seven Mile police who after the tragic events from my first novel, The Symposium of Justice is seeking to increase the police budget for his members to the city council. Misty Finnegan is now the mayor after former Mayor Goodman was killed during his encounter with the vigilante Cliffhanger. Misty on the other hand had been working to place on city council a more conservative presence so that she can gain legislative control of the governing body away from the progressive liberals who had made enticing deals with the local labor unions. The union president despondent with Misty Finnagan’s resistance to throw money at the police union so that they can go out and capture Cliffhanger decides that the new mayor needs to be removed from office and plans her assassination. The rest of the story evolves from there and will feature the type of material I write about often with the pulpy antics I tend to elaborate on with great enthusiasm. I love to write action, so each of these chapters will of course end with a great climax of an action sequence that is the norm of my style of writing.

This ideal came from two sources. First it was a recent visit to the Apple Store in Kenwood, Ohio. I was quite impressed with the high level of interest people had for Apple Products. I realized what many other people within publishing had been telling me for years, that the traditional way of publishing was moving to digital uploads. But these new Apple type customers don’t necessarily want a huge 1,000,0000 word novel to upload onto their devices—which is what the Trial of Fletcher Finnegan is slated to be. It could possibly dwarf Atlas Shrugged as far as size and scope. Many of the Apple users want things quickly so they can move on to the next thing—essentially because they want to be able to use all the features of their device.   They want to do a little reading of something that inspires them, they want to listen to some music, text friends, update their online accounts and check out current events. To carry Cliffhanger into the 21st century, all these considerations have to be taken seriously. The other source actually came from a favorite writer of mine, Johnston McCulley who wrote the original Zorro story The Curse of Capistrano. The original Zorro stories were published in newspapers as separate chapters nearly 100 years ago to the day. Douglas Fairbanks would take those stories and make them into a motion picture called the Mark of Zorro. Then there were the various Republic serials shown in chapters for the Saturday matinee editions. All this led to the Disney television show which was what I grew up with. I loved that show and still do. Like many people who have not been consumed by progressivism and yearn for these traditional American stories, it quickly becomes evident that nobody else in the industry will do them, so the task falls on the present to find a way to create a new market where there is no other path. This is no different from the type of path Johnston McCulley faced in 1919 when all his individual chapters of Zorro provided to All-Story Weekly a novel.

These types of things usually take time to work through and only in hind-sight does a pattern emerge. McCulley’s first Zorro novel emerged in 1919, his second in 1922, the third in 1931, and the fourth in 1941. We tend to think of all this work happening at the same time, but essentially they took place over a twenty year span. The style of writing I enjoy most is a pulp brand popularized by McCulley and Lovecraft from this time period. However, my subject matter tends to lean in a conservative direction making modern-day publishers weary of my work. It’s not a conspiracy, if they thought they would make a lot of money, they’d jump on board in a minute. But they don’t often have patience to allow a story like Cliffhanger to develop as the story goes against the grain of the progressive types who currently run most of the entertainment industry for many of the reasons described in great detail at this site.

A third influence is actually two-fold which has driven me to attempt something new with the Cliffhanger character. A dinner I had over the summer with Gery Deer, then a few discussions I had with one of my son-in-laws indicated what an extreme hunger a public who generally has traditional values that used to be realized in American westerns, desired material that they could relate to. I would tell them the story about how publishers are going belly up left and right—specifically thinking of my experiences with Tail of the Dragon and they’d just sort of listen patiently hoping that I’d come up with something. Well, now I have and I intend to have some fun with it.

Readers of this new series will instantly recognize the type of themes I write about in this blog. As I have said, I use this forum as a kind of note pad. So it should come as no surprise. Chapter two for the new Cliffhanger series is already in process and features a chapter on homeschooling as a teacher’s union is the villain in that particular story. It is one thing to tell literal news stories like I do every day on this blog site. It is quite another to put that subject into the context of a story, which often has more communicative power than a literal translation. It is that kind of contextual ability that made Zorro so popular, but for the complicated times that we currently live in, a more updated hero needs to help flesh out the anxieties that we all live with each day. For that, Cliffhanger is a character that can take many of these traditional American concepts and let them play out in story form in the kind of doses that a modern audience can enjoy.

There will be more news on this endeavor over the next couple of weeks, but I am already writing the chapters and having fun with the characters. For my readers, it should be a lot of fun. And it will be an inventive way to reach new fans in ways that have not been done before. It’s fun to revisit the Cliffhanger character and I’m sure it will bring a smile to the many faces who for a decade have coaxed me to write book two of a story that touched their lives as a throwback to the kind of character that started all of modern entertainment—Zorro. It is only appropriate in these current times that a new character emerge to convey our modern concerns articulated with great fanfare in the upcoming Curse of Fort Seven Mile.

 

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Nickelback’s Edge of Revolution: Communism hidden behind the Occupy Movement

There is a lot of talk these days about revolution. For those statists who want to pretend that their grip on the old world will remain, they are dreadfully in for some big surprises. There are two revolutions afoot across the world and often they are mixed together in the headlines of news reports. To novice eyes, it all looks the same, but that is not the case. There are moves toward capitalism, like what is going on in modern-day Hong Kong—where the people of that city hope to retain much of the type of government that is taken for granted in the West. Then there is the disguised communist push hidden behind progressivism centering on today’s youth and the Occupy Wall Street types. That is the type of revolution that the rock group Nickelback is presenting with their new 2014 album. The Edge Of A Revolution is the lead single from the rock band’s eighth album due in stores on Republic Records. “Edge of a Revolution” is political protest song sympathetic to radicals against capitalism. Here are the lyrics:

Head high, protest line Freedom scribbled on your spine Headline,New York Times Standing on the edge of a revolution Hey, hey, just obey Your secret’s safe with the NSA In God we trust, or the CIA Standing on the edge of a revolution Yeah, we’re standing on the edge of a revolution Revolution Revolution Revolution No, we won’t give up We won’t go away ‘Cause we’ll never thought to live in this mass delusion No, we don’t wanna hear it, another word that you say ‘Cause we know they’re out depending on mass confusion No, we can’t turn back, we can’t turn away ‘Cause it’s time we all rely on the lost illusion No, we won’t lay down and accept our fate, We’re standing on the edge of a revolution Wall streets, common thief When they get caught, they all go free A brand new yacht, and a finders fee Standing on the edge of a revolution Same shit, different day Can’t keep fed if I can’t get paid We’ll all be dead if this shit don’t change Standing on the edge of a revolution Yeah, we’re standing on the edge of a revolution Revolution Revolution Revolution No, we won’t give up We won’t go away ‘Cause we’ll never thought to live in this mass delusion No, we don’t wanna hear it, another word that you say ‘Cause we know they’re out depending on mass confusion No, we can’t turn back, we can’t turn away ‘Cause it’s time we all rely on the lost illusion No, we won’t lay down and accept our fate, We’re standing on the edge of a revolution

 

Nickelback is proving to follow their rock music diatribes against capitalism appealing to a life of excess while at the same time preaching against it, like they did in their single, “Rockstar.” The rock band is Canadian in origin and have quite a history making songs about excess sound appealing while sending a strong message to their listeners portraying capitalism as a vile evil. This is the same thing they are doing with their new single “Revolution.” Their suggestion is mixed truth, such the libertarian concerns about the NSA, but then features their focus on Wall Street thieves buying yachts and making livings off finder’s fees. Their appeal is directly communicating to the young people sympathetic to Occupy Wall Street. Whereas “Rockstar” was a self satirized attack against the life of excess that groups like Nickleback live while on the road, this new song paints the rich in America as something to revolutionize against and is a call to action.

 

The message from Nickleback is to use common anxieties such as the NSA to sell communism through the same type of revolution that the Bolsheviks used in St Petersburg in Russia during 1917 to bring communism to a newly formed Soviet Union. The Wall Street protestors called upon by Nickleback is demanding the same type of thing painting the bourgeoisie of American culture as something that must be overcome. Many of the same youth chanting with upraised hands to the beat of this new song have no idea that much of the political push behind the uprisings of the Middle East is communism using the religion of Islam as a mask for cultural penetration.

They don’t call it out by name but communism is the revolution Nickleback is calling for. The flags waved in their music video shown above are all modern manifestations of communism. There are no American flags waving toward the tyranny of progressive Europe, or support of the Hong Kong capitalists against communist China—the revolution Nickleback is advocating is one supporting communism.

 

So think about that when you hear the new Nickleback song on the radio and at nightclubs provoking you to dance a bit to the rhythm. Then consider where the voices in favor of capitalism are—they aren’t in the music and movie industry. They are alone and voiceless for the most part. Capitalists do not have advocates at the level of entertainment that Nickleback represents. The music industry certainly doesn’t support such artists, and lyrics that support capitalism against socialism. Pro capitalist messages certainly don’t get played on the radio. But if a group like the Canadian rock stars Nickleback want to sing against capitalism, they’ll get all the weapons of the media on their side to broadcast straight into the ears of America’s youth—so that they will demand change from a capitalist system to a communist one.

Nickleback doesn’t sing about what life will be like after the revolution when all their listeners are sitting around waiting for someone to give them a job. Or nobody is moving money on Wall Street to create new Apple stores in shopping malls to sell those same fans iPhones so that they can listen to Nickleback sing anti-capitalist songs against America. They just preach revolution against the American system of capitalism. They don’t say what comes next. For that, today’s youth only need to look at modern-day Hong Kong and see what happens after a communist revolution. Today’s Nickleback fans will give to their grandchildren a revolution going back the other way—the same as Hong Kong is currently—hoping to take some capitalism from a communist government after the freedoms of today are long gone.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

The Sad Extinction of the American Housewife: Family assult through institutionalized prostitution

I had the fortune of growing up in a time when the women’s liberation movement had not yet taken complete hold. My mother raised me as a traditional housewife and I was able to see firsthand the social destruction that was going on in America as a direct result of progressive social management. Both of my grand parents were farmers and my grandmothers were both traditional women, but outside of that family unit some of my aunts had started experimenting with the whole women’s liberation movement and lectured my mother often of her stupidity in pursuing a life of tradition when the world was on the move. At my school my mother was a room mother and used to make specialized crafts for the kids in my class—which everyone adored. Even thirty years later when I meet someone from back then, they still talk about the nice things my mother did for them when they were in the third grade. Their parents were also experimenting with the whole women’s liberation movement and the kids weren’t getting the nurturing that they needed at home.

 

This went on for many years; each one as we neared the 1980s became increasingly worse. The pressure on my parents to modernize was intense—it came from all directions—family members, neighbors, and especially peers. For my mother one woman was the most audacious feminist that there was, she was a school substitute teacher and had her children in all the extra curricular activities that they could possibly be involved in, and was a socialite on a scale that most adults in our region knew her name. Because she was always at my school as a substitute she knew my mother well, and there became a competition between the two women as to whom the best mother was—of course this was participated in only by the crazy feminist. My mom was so non-confrontational that she allowed herself to be ridiculed by this and many other women only to vent at home later. My mom had made a value judgment to stay traditional and the world was making it very difficult for her. Eventually she gave in a bit and got a job—as everyone had been telling her to do for years. Seeing how much pressure this one particular feminist rival put on my mother I took it out on her son who was on my soccer team. During a scrimmage I pummeled him, and it was he who gave me the nick-name, “Animal.” I left him damaged with a kick to the face not so much to hurt him, but to hurt his mother. I could see what was going on and I didn’t like it.

 

Back then there was an experimental neighborhood in Lakota named Dutchland Woods, which still exists today. It was a very progressive community and featured a White House in the middle of it where social events were conducted. I had several friends who lived there, and most of the families were of the new “dual income” type which meant that when the kids got off school, they didn’t have parents at home until 6 to 7 PM at night. It was the strangest thing during summer break, it was like a land of kids running the whole community—it was literally like a Charlie Brown cartoon where adults didn’t exist. My first girl friend lived there—a cute little girl from the fourth grade who was already letting boys feel her out even before she had breasts to feel. Sex was the predominate activity in Dutchland Woods as there wasn’t anything else for the kids to do. Everybody dated everybody else and the sexual standards of the entire community were notoriously lowered. Not one child raised in that neighborhood, my friends included grew up healthily to live productive lives—and there were a lot of kids. I could see it from the measuring stick of a traditional household where the father went away, made all the money, and mom took care of the house and everything in it—particularly the children. It was easy to see even during the 80s that Dutchland Woods as a social experiment was a disaster. These days it is a community of starter homes for parents looking for entry into the Lakota school district without the high price of the newer neighborhoods—every one of them built-in the same social philosophy as that experimental neighborhood from the 80s was. Thirty years later there are no more housewives, only a massive society of parents who are all dual income households leaving children to raise themselves—and the results are predictably disastrous.   There are a few women who stay home with their kids, but most of them these days are so socially insecure because of the social pressure to embrace progressive feminism that they seek to show their stripes in other ways—by hosting every Tupperware party offered to them, participating in every True Romance gatherings they’re invited to, and supporting school levies to show how much they value “education.” They become like the idiots in the opening video—cannon fodder for social experimentation that has failed.

 

When I met my wife, she was one of those rare people who lived that busy life—only she had the fortune of being raised by a great-grandmother, at least during her formative years. She lived in a big house and came from a family that was very successful, financially and socially. We were married at the Becket Ridge Country Club back when it was the premier social gathering place in the area. My wife hated that life and was looking for a way out of the downward spiral that was consuming all her friends. She lived in Rolling Knolls, which is still considered a respectable neighborhood. During the 80s it was considered wealthy, and I knew many of the kids who lived there as well. It was essentially like Dutchland Woods only on a more epic scale—kids ran the whole community during the day, sex was easy—way too easy—drinking, drugs, and other forms of disgusting behavior was the norm. The parents were too tired to do anything about anything by the time they came home from work—so nothing ever got addressed. My wife did not want that life, so when we found each other with her still in high school, the fireworks of social pressure began early as her life was planned out for her quite extensively—more along the lines of what the rest of society was doing reflected in the neighborhoods of Rolling Knolls and Dutchland Woods. Both of us wanted a different life than the one that was being offered so we married early and started our own family.

For over 25 years virtually every family member we have had no matter where they live in the country has attempted to coax my wife into “getting a job.” Well, this has been a problem because she has a job which I consider extremely valuable. Being a housewife if done properly is the most important job in the world. Of the three children my mother had, not a single one has emotional difficulties of any kind, and are quite successful people. They may not be as traditional as me, but they are successful in their own ways, and are certainly great parents themselves. We have a uniquely good family free of alcoholics, jail birds, and abusive personalities largely because my mother was there to raise her kids the right way—without outside progressive influence. My wife and I always strove to do better than that—and we have. I stood in support of what my wife wanted to do as a traditional housewife for many years and when family members became too pushy, we showed them the door. I simply don’t stand for it, and have supported my wife in her decisions—because in a lot of ways I wanted it as much if not more than she did. I wanted my children to know they had a mother always at home to help launch them into their lives. The net result is that my kids are two of the sanest people in our family and all the families they grew up knowing. This is not an accident. It’s a product of a good family that provides emotional strength instead of corrosive tumult self-induced by social neurosis. It was far from easy—in fact I’d say it was one of the hardest things to do that I’ve ever had to do—but it was certainly worth doing.

I have always viewed having a job as a secondary importance outside of a family. Jobs come and go, but a family is something that stays with you during an entire life-time. The job that really counts is the one that is done at home. Getting a job and obtaining income only fuels the life at home. The identity of ones existence is not the job itself and if it is—that is a bad parent. When all those people called my wife on the phone telling her that she needed to get a job to have social value—they were telling her that the work she was doing at home was meaningless without the positive appraisal of her peers. Even after our children were raised, my wife has still stayed home because we like it that way. When a person has a job, they sell a part of themselves toward the institutional aims of their employer. This is simply prostitution of a different type. People are being paid to trade their time for money and the false premise that is so popular today is that in this exchange success is in having the larger check book because peer judgment is all important. Well, I never forgot the trouble my mother had, so I never put such pressure on my wife’s shoulders. I don’t care the least about peer review, and I care less about what the national unemployment numbers are based on government statistics. If I had it my way every household that has children in it would designate one parent to stay home with their children and operate their homes like a business. The unemployment numbers then would be disastrously high as there would be suddenly many unfilled jobs. But most jobs these days are overfilled, just to fill the needs of a progressive society and their obsession with peer review—as if consensus can erase the sins of their terrible parenting ability and the many screwed up children they produced who grow up to become complete idiots.

 

If I had to do it all over again—in how we raised our kids, I wouldn’t change a thing. I had to work a lot more than usual to make it happen, but I always considered outside employment to be less valuable than inside the home employment. I never thought to tell my wife that “I make all the money and you have to do as I say.” It has never crossed my mind—because the work at home that she did with my children was much more important than making something new that would be sold to consumers in a global economy. Our lives are more important than any “service to society.” Hell with society, the world would be a whole lot better if more housewives took pride in their work in the house caring for their young than pandering to the idiots who think Fifty Shades of Grey is a great book as they lock themselves in the bathroom reading it after a long day at work pretending to be busy. I’ve done just about every kind of job there is to do over the last thirty years, and most jobs are unnecessary. Children are more important.

 

If you really love a person, how could you want them to serve others in exchange for money at the expense of time not spent toward family pursuits? Even now that my wife and I are empty nesters, my wife is free to meet with my daughters for lunch, or to go shopping during the week and on the weekends she is free to spend time with me. Parents who are always busy doing their own thing have a poor quality of life and that hasn’t changed over the years. It was like that when feminism started robbing mothers from the homes of children during the 70s and 80s—and it is worse now than it’s ever been. There aren’t any laws that politicians can come up with to fix the situation, and there isn’t any education that will solve the problem either. The abandonment of the American Housewife has been one of the worst decisions that was ever made. I have thought that for many years now, and feel more strongly about it now than I did as a young person. For all those people who tried to talk my wife into getting a job and selling herself like a Vegas whore to social pressure—I’m so glad she didn’t listen. It would have been a terrible decision. I used to say that “advice is only as good as the person who gives it,” well that is never more true. When people call and ridicule you for doing something you know is right, look at their life and decide if they are really happy and successful. If they aren’t hang up the phone and get away from them. They are more destructive than helpful.

Just because the masses of society believe something, does not mean that it’s good, or helpful. The abandonment of the American Housewife is proving to be detrimental to the continuation of our culture. Every supporter of progressive expansion of women’s liberation has only thrown housewives out of the home and into the meat grinder of social servitude leaving children at home alone to raise themselves based on primal instinct. Once a young girl is felt up and pranced naked in front of a boy well before they even reach the age of sexual awareness, that girl will grow up into a wreck of a young lady, and the kids she has will end up being raised in chaos at a local day care facility. The chain reaction of mental destruction begins in those unsupervised summer days where parents are busy in service to dollars through institutionalized prostitution. The next door neighbor might be impressed with the new car, or the wardrobe bought at Nordstrom’s, but the kids are suffering and will grow up to become idiots. Because the American Housewife is nowhere to be found—except in my home—and a few others scattered about as rare as gold supporting the money the Federal Reserve prints to paper during periods of quantitative easing.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Star Wars: Commander–How the Apple Company greatly increases the quality of life

I have predicted and discussed much of what is happening today in virtually every category over the last 4 years.  Some listened, most didn’t.  For those who didn’t—hopefully you learned your lesson and will in the future. However, for me, which has been the case all of my life, humanity has let me down.  People do not aspire to be what they should, and the times are often regulated and maintained by the laziest of our species.  This is why I often turn to mythology for inspiration, because the Wall Street Journal doesn’t offer much inspiration—just raw news.  Contemporary real-life characters fall short of my expectations—so I don’t even bother.  Thus, my love of Star Wars and the reason I discuss it so much—especially lately is because it provides such motivation.  It is the creation of minds in need of something bigger than the human race is currently offering.  So I often vacation there to recharge my own batteries.  As such, it should come as no surprise that I had a viewing party at my home for the new Disney television series Rebels, which premiered with an introductory movie on Friday, October 03, 2014.

To celebrate I spent the day in the world of Star Wars in one fashion or another.  My wife and I played the Old Republic’s Galactic Starfighter online—which is always fun.  I then spent the morning playing X-wing Miniatures which is of course my latest passion.  I rounded out the time between those events up until the airing of Rebels playing a new game downloaded for free onto my iPad called Star Wars: Commander.  My brother texted me excitedly about it recently and after a few weeks of prodding, I finally downloaded it.  I didn’t give the free app much though because I didn’t think it would be any good—that it would be a kid’s game.  Let me say that it is far from a kid’s game—it is a wonderful war simulation of resource management and I have been wonderfully consumed by its contents.

Years ago—way back in the 90s I once spent an entire week playing an old game similar called Armada 2000—or something to that effect.  One of my nephews introduced it to me and it required the building of fleets by mining raw materials and going to war to conquer planets.  The graphics were rough, but the game content was wonderful.  Around that same time I started enjoying the various Sim City games which developed into a game called Outpost, which required you to terraform an entire alien planet by using the resources there to build a civilization.  I have also been a fan of the various Civilization games over the years including the most recent introduction.  Those are endlessly fun games of strategy and construction that are designed for those with a keen eye for productivity.  Never before in the history of the human race were such tools of resource management available to so many people.  The new Star Wars: Commander is all of those games wrapped up into one.  It is incredible—especially for a free app. It’s a whole new age that we’re living in where such a thing is offered as a simple download.  I can’t recall a time when I enjoyed blowing stuff up so much.

Star Wars: Commander lets you as a player pick a faction—either Rebel player or the Empire and build a base that must maintain an economy through your credit vaults while continually mining alloy for the construction of everything from factories to starships.   You have to build and maintain troop strength, engage in research and development, and deploy defense strategies as your base will constantly be attacked by other player’s bases looking for credits and alloy, and shield generation.  It is fairly involved for a game designed to be played on the go—anywhere and everywhere.  I’m used to playing those types of things on a PC locked in my room and not dressing for days.  This ability to put such a thing on a computer device that I carry in my jacket pocket is unreal to my previous generation eyes.

On that note as I have been playing Star Wars: Commander all week diligently—everywhere that I can really, in restaurants, in shopping malls, in the fabric stores as my wife shops for supplies for the many blankets and craft items she makes, I have been fascinated by how portable this new age of ours really is.  Commander is really a game that must be played against other players so it requires interaction.  The brilliance of the game is that the designers created the basic template, but most of the way the content is used is created by other players—leaving players to essentially let the game evolve through competition.  But it is the portability that I find so strangely interesting.  While shopping at Kenwood Mall with my wife and daughter at the Eddie Bauer store, I stood outside across from the Apple Store and marveled at how busy it was at 7:30 PM on a weekday evening.  Business was thumping inside and a line requiring service was outside the door.  It was amazing.  People were very active in looking at the various Apple products—everything from iPads, iPhones, to new computers.

I’m a huge fan of the iPad as I use mine everywhere for everything.  I use it primarily for maps, and for processing data on spreadsheets.  It is a remarkable device—there is no question about it.  I’m not so keen on the iPhone as I like to separate those two functions.  But Apple and its innovations are game changing aspects to human civilization.  Most of the people shopping in the store were there to pick up devices to allow them to have more versatility in texting their friends or updating their facebook accounts.  They weren’t looking for performance as much as being fashionable.  But, their interest is driving the market in new directions regardless of the quality of their desires.  It is largely because of that swarm in the Apple Store that Disney put out the new game Commander.  It’s the perfect game for a touch screen device.

The new game only enhanced my Star Wars day experience leading me up to the Disney Channel airing of the new Rebels cartoon—which was fabulous I might add.   I’ve been talking about it for a year now—and it was worth the wait.  Cartoons like that and content on the Apple products like what Commander is certainly elevates the expectations of entertainment.  But what’s more important is the reason people like Star Wars so much—as I’m far from alone on the topic.  Star Wars offers hope and expectations on human potential that is higher than it otherwise would be.  And Apple is there to provide a format to further the mythology into ways that were unfathomable a decade ago.  Star Wars: Commander just seven years ago would have cost $50 dollars for a PC title sold in a store like Gamestop.  Now it’s a free app.  The game makes its money off the impatience and mismanagement of its players.  For those who don’t know how to manage resources, they will pay extra for crystals to build up their defenses or increase their offensive mobility.  Many of the upgrades take several hours to implement, especially shield generators and alloy depots—but they can be sped up through the consumption of crystals and Disney sells them by the bag which I’m sure is generating millions upon millions of dollars.  I typically launch an attack from my base every three and a half minutes—and I have yet to meet the same player twice—that’s how many people are on the game.  I would say that it’s a successful enterprise.

For those who want to play, you can look me up when you arrive by typing in the name of Cliffhanger—the character from my first novel The Symposium of Justice.  Of course you know—I’m playing for the Rebels.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Why Gordon Ramsey is so Good: The difference between Jags and everyone else in West Chester

One thing that Gordon Ramsay has brought to my life is an appreciation for fine food.  I have a background that involves working in several Cincinnati restaurants as a grill cook and waiter and have seen many of the troubles featured on the Gordon Ramsay television show Kitchen Nightmares firsthand.  I learned a lot from those places of secondary employment—most notably how to handle trouble when short of expected staff.  It created in me a lack of professional rigidity that serves me very well now.  So needless to say, my wife and I nearly exclusively these days make it a point to watch the several Gordon Ramsey television shows that are in production, Hotel Hell, Kitchen Nightmares, MasterChef, The F Word, MasterChef Junior and Hell’s Kitchen.  After watching so much of Ramsay it is impossible not to critic my food when I eat out—especially in the upscale places.

In Cincinnati it is Jags in West Chester that represents the best that the culinary arts have to offer.  It used to be the Maisoniette in downtown Cincinnati which finally closed in 2005 after maintaining a five-star culinary rating for several consecutive years, and the Celestial in Mt Adams which continues to a wonderful restaurant.  I used to be a fan of the Celestial after plays at the Taft Theater and days spent at the Art Museum—but Jags has replaced it. The drawback to Jags is that there isn’t much to look at outside the windows as the Celestial has a wonderful view of the city and the river.  But Jags for its exclusivity is better in that you can tune out the outside world and enjoy culinary art with some much needed isolation.

It’s not like I plan for days to embark on fine restaurant adventures, they just sort of happen out of necessity.  However, prior to Chef Ramsay I would usually prefer McDonald’s to the complicated—long winded dining experiences at the Celestial.  For instance, the Celestial Oscar is priced just under $40 and had dainty portions as opposed to the Oscar at Jags which costs $59 currently—and is more than enough to fill you up.  When it’s just me looking for food, I often want the quickest bang for the buck just because I’m so busy, but Ramsay has shown how wonderful food can be, that I find myself more and more enjoying the finer dining options around Cincinnati—as opposed to the quickest.

It’s not a fluke that Fox has so many Ramsey television shows featuring the award-winning chef.  Gordon Ramsey is a very effective manager—and it is a pleasure to watch him cut through problems quickly to get to the core of a problem.  Usually, the trouble with food ends up being psychological as opposed to knowledge based.  A lot of people know how to make great food, but they lack the sanity to put it on a plate.  This is what is fascinating about Ramsey—is his ability to break people down and rebuild them in such a short period of time.  In Kitchen Nightmares, Ramsey usually only spends a week figuring out design changes to a struggling restaurant, confronting owners who are struggling with personal problems which come out directly into their products, and re-launching with aggressive marketing campaigns from the local community.  The same process can be seen more articulately in Hell’s Kitchen where most of the candidates appear to be floundering messes at the beginning of the episodes, but as the season progresses, Ramsey pulls out of one or two of them, a potential culinary master by pounding out their inner psychosis into something that can produce masterpieces on a plate.  Ramsey films Hell’s Kitchen at the same time as the MasterChef shows which are incredible as the participants are forced to become greater through competition until they are master chefs.  It is amazing how quickly Ramsey is able to get to the source of a problem—and helps people overcome it.

Ramsey even though he is from the United Kingdom is one of the finest examples of capitalism that there is currently.  In essence, beyond all the personal problems of the people he helps, he forces them to accept capitalism or to perish—which is really the best thing he could possibly do for them.  Most of Ramsey’s enterprises succeed, although a few fail—his ratio is incredibly successful—which is why my wife and I enjoy watching him so much.  But because of Ramsey I can now spot the quality of people’s minds based on what they cook for me, which is something I never considered prior to watching so much of Chef Ramsey.  I can now spot in a little dive of a restaurant in the middle of Tennessee that the owners are having marital difficulties based on the way they prepare the food, and I can tell when a little over-priced Bistro on Lake Ontario is full of self-inflated egos based on the quality of the food.  Like Gordon Ramsey, Chef Michelle Brown at Jags has a background in sports and that competitive spirit finds its way onto the plate with every serving.  The food is often served meticulously, even in large groups.  Recently while in a large group it was easy to see even during the appetizer that great care comes out of the kitchen as we ordered three raw bar sea food samples.  They were brought out in massive fountain-like containers, and within each were oysters, jumbo shrimp and crab legs not haphazardly thrown in with clots of ice, but meticulously spaced.  I measured them in their spacing and each serving was equally distributed.  This to me was remarkable and is why I prefer Jags over something like the Celestial.

Compared to other area restaurants like Stone Creek and Bravo! Cucina Italiana which are franchise establishments that give nice middle of the road dining experiences disguised as upper crest—I can now eat in places like that and know much that there is to know about the kitchen and personalities involved.  The standard procedure in Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares is to sit down and eat the food—once he’s done that he attacks directly the root of the problem which is usually psychological problems between owners, managers, and staff—or food prep laziness.  In Jags you can feel that the victory of the meal is won during food prep, in those critical hours between 2 PM and 5 PM when dinner rush is planned for vigorously in the kitchen, and those other places where things are frozen because they are purchased in bulk for all the area restaurants by deals cut with food suppliers.  The employees at second-hand restaurants pretending to be exquisite is that they show up for work an hour before dinner service and expect to make great food—and it just doesn’t work that way.

Critics of Gordon Ramsey are often  the same people who think that capitalism is unfair—and they are also the same type of people who would rather eat at Bravo! Cucina Italiana as opposed to Jags where the individual meticulousness of Chef Michelle Brown comes out in virtually every meal leaving her kitchen.  They are the ones Ramsey cusses at as opposed to receiving his praise.  But I continue to be amazed at the playfulness and hard work that Chef Ramsey is able to conger up all while maintaining a family, traveling the world, and hosting four television shows that involve intense management techniques.  He is a remarkable person which is also why his food is so magnificent.  West Chester, Ohio is one of the best areas in the United States to live and its per capita income make it affluent enough to support a Gordon Ramsey restaurant.  Until he does that, Jags will likely be my top pick of dining experience.  And under the benefits of capitalism, it would be a great day indeed to have the difficult choice of Chef Ramsey or Chef Brown.  I like Chef Brown so much that I might have to pick her over Ramsey.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com