Tag: overmanwarrior

Kelly Kohls for State Senate of the 7th District: Taking the stink bugs out of the State House–starting with Shannon Jones

Collectivists are a dangerous species in that they are like bugs specifically Halyomorpha halys–brown marmorated stink bugs.  This year for whatever reason stink bugs are popping up everywhere and whenever I see one in my home, I take it outside to free it, but also to get it out of my house.  But there are so many of them that even though I could crush one of the little bugs with little effort, the creatures can ultimately consume my time as I try to address each one of them individually.  The labor unions, political party driven insurgents, and other progressive groups have had a target on my friend Kelly Kohls for a long time.   She has put herself out there pushing for real change especially on the education front—and has drawn a lot of stink bugs into her life.  One of those stink bugs—Shannon Jones in a close alliance with the Governor John Kasich and the Republican Party in Ohio have looked at Kelly’s primary challenge of Jones’ Senate seat and come directly after the former Springboro School Board President using the same tactics progressive groups have used against her in the past—a bankruptcy filing.  Of course this action comes straight out of the Republican Party to defend their grip on power at any cost.  So Kelly wanted to get her message out and answer Jones’ accusations—and of course I helped her.  I take the stink bugs out of my house without killing them—but I also intend to do the same thing with all the progressives and weak-kneed politicians in Columbus and Washington, and Shannon Jones and her John Kasich boot licking ways needs to be carried outside where they can no longer stink up the place with apathy and inaction.   Here is Kelly’s message one week before the primary challenge for Jones’ seat on May 6th 2014.

Progressives thought it was outrageous that Kelly Kohls even had a mortgage of $829,000 on a $450,000 home—and that her bankruptcy was a sign of fiscal recklessness.  This is because most of Kelly’s harshest critics are those who work for government and make great salaries doing almost nothing.  Learning how to accept progressive causes into their lives preserves their incomes.  They don’t start businesses or deal with money-making opportunities.  They simply take money so to progressives, it is a mystery as to where money comes from—and they believe it to be finite.  They emphasize the large sums of money to point out that Kelly is operating above the average norm for the “middle class” which was a term created by labor unions.

However, Kelly has five kids and most of them have gone to college by now.  Kelly herself holds a doctorate so a lot of money has been spent in the Kohls family on education and college these days is a $50K to $100K enterprise.  So Kelly hasn’t been spending money hanging out at Jags buying $300 meals every night for her friends—she’s been getting her education, putting her kids through college, and starting entrepreneurial enterprises.  All that together easily adds up to a million dollars when you try to do all those things in the same fiscal decade.  Since progressives get most of what they want in life by begging, mooching, and looting—they don’t understand Kelly Kohls—but I do, and have no problem at all standing with her in a run for State Senate.

I know how the name calling game works and 90% of what is said derogatory about Kelly Kohls is of that variety.  I have been married for a long time; my wife is a “house-wife” in the traditional sense.  She makes herself 100% available to my grown children and now grandchildren and she is proud to be the kind of mom that the television show Leave It to Beaver would have recognized in his home.  For my traditional views on family life, my disdain for feminism as a progressive movement, and a belief that all children need a strong mother in the home guiding a family to prosperity, I have been labeled a sexist because most everyone in existence is doing things wrong in their families in my opinion—and these names came at me well before I called the PTA moms at Lakota “latte sipping prostitutes with asses the size of car tires and diamond rings to match.”  The name calling was already going on well before—I simply wasn’t going to play the game for the “good of the community” or any group which I was a spokesman for.  The personal attacks were designed to change my behavior just like the stink bug infestation can overwhelm you if allowed.

Kelly doesn’t share all my views, she is certainly an A type personality and that can rub other A type personalities the wrong way, but she shares with me a love of tradition and commitment to spirituality.  If she doesn’t want to cook meals for her husband and await him at the door with his slippers and a newspaper that is her business within her family and I’m alright with it.  It’s a decision she has to make between her husband and her.  It certainly wouldn’t stop me from voting for her for State Senator of the 7th District.  Are women equal to men?  Most of the time women are better—on intellectual matters especially.  But men are built for heavy lifting both physically and emotionally—and this is why traditional roles had men and women separating their tasks in such a way.  The man came home and was recharged by his wife for the next day’s battles.  However, politics is an intellectual pursuit, and in it Kelly Kohls is less prone to corruption, deals, and peer pressure than a John Kasich type because of her intellectual aptitude.

Shannon Jones is not as directed as Kelly is.  She allowed herself to be steered into proposing the Senate Bill 5 controversy to drastically pull back the power of public sector unions in Ohio.  When that bill was repealed Jones and Kasich retreated into progressive pandering and Obamacare Medicaid expansion.  Shannon went right along with the party line whatever it was and did not think for herself—so she needs to be carried outside with all the other stink bugs and set free from the State House.  Kelly is much better equipped intellectually, and spiritually to do the job of Senator of the 7th District.

I’ve known Kelly for quite a while and one thing that she is at her very core is something that I recognize as being the highest quality there is for a woman—she is a mom first and everything else second.  Kelly has been a political activist and political contributor now that her children are grown because she wishes to bring her nurturing tendencies to the State of Ohio instead of just her home.  My wife has no such desires—but she is not an A type personality like Kelly and I.  Progressives have created the modern definitions for womanhood and like their fiscal policies—they are all wrong and are ruining the lives of everyone who follows them.  The real roles of traditionalist, conservatives, and men and women is far more complicated than the progressive stink bugs can wrap their minds around and that is not Kelly’s problem—nor mine.

Kelly and her husband filed for bankruptcy trying to make things happen—the way they were supposed to.  But the business climate changed on them leaving them hanging over the edge of a cliff for which they were dropped.  The bankruptcy laws in America were created to encourage investment risk because that is the requirement of capitalism.  Government workers do not take risks, they figure out whose boots they have to lick—and they do so to protect their jobs and keep the tax money flowing into their pockets.  They don’t typically try to start businesses, they don’t typically take responsibility for raising their own children—they send them off to public school to have the task done for them—and they certainly don’t take risks.  Kelly Kohls has, and now she is doing it again going after an established Senator in Shannon Jones during the May 6th primary.  And for that risk, the stink bugs are attacking her with that terrible odor they emit, which the media is happy to play off of.

Kelly simply wants to take the stink bugs out of the State House one by one starting with Shannon Jones.  Of course they won’t like it, but they don’t have a choice.  Republicans and Democrats functioning from progressive politics are stinking up Columbus and they need to be removed so that order can be brought to our Houses of Legislation.  And that is the essence of Kelly’s run against Shannon Jones.  Kelly is a mother taking care of her house and her family.  Only her care extends out to the State of Ohio and all the people in it who just want a shot at the American Dream.   To some Kelly is an education crusader, to others she is a combative “A” type personality that wants to be in charge.  To others she is a fiscally reckless overlord who lives above the “middleclass.”   To others still she is a threat to the Republican Party and even more dangerous to Democrats.  But I know her as a mother who cares the way all mothers do.  She sees Ohio as her family and she wants to fight to do what’s right for it.  And for her the best way to take care of her family is to remove the stink bugs from the State House which is why she is running for a Senate seat and why the establishment Republicans are terrified.

Rich Hoffman

  www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Assault on Imdaar Alpha: Hope for mankind’s future in tabetop gaming

My regular readers usually don’t give articles like this one much notice—but often I gain new ones who aren’t specifically interested in philosophy or politics.  However, I would recommend for everybody to consider this topic because of the vast reach and scope of it which will conclude with an article tomorrow about gambling.  There is a changing paradigm of social behavior which is unmistakable and positive and deserves some attention.  We spend a lot of time complaining about the effects of long-established social causes, but seldom identify new causes before they take hold and the effects they bring with them.

I have written as reference more than once my intense love of the new tabletop game Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures.  To my view Fantasy Flight Games who produces that game is simply one of the best companies of its kind anywhere in the world.  Over this past week the new rules for their Epic Play formats was released and a good indication of the direction of the game was provided.  The much talked about Rebel Transport expansion shipped early from Barnes and Noble and within a week people like me who have had pre-orders out there for a while will receive their ships.  I can genuinely say that I am very excited about it.

Also a Wave 4 set of expansion ships is hitting at the start of June and Fantasy Flight Games is sponsoring a tournament as a chance to win first dibs on the lucrative new ships.  So I signed up to participate and realized quickly how vast this new game is across the world as I looked up the list of participating stores near my home.  It was actually quite astonishing to me because it allowed me to see just how popular this game is not just in The United States, but throughout the world.  You can see for yourself at the link below and preview some of the ships from Wave 4.  The participating countries are Belgium, Canada, France, Ireland, Romania, Slovakia, The United Kingdom, and The United States.  And we’re not talking about just a few stores; each country has dozens if not hundreds of participating stores.  Just in Cincinnati for instance, there are two not counting additional stores in Dayton and Columbus.  So getting into the tournament called Assault on Imdaar Alpha is not difficult.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_npm_sec.asp?eidm=219&esem=2&epmi=s

I had a particularly rough series of days this past week and to calm down I found myself shuffling through the game cards that I have for X-Wing Miniatures thinking about the squad that I wanted to enter into the upcoming tournament.  I found in the cards a soothing quality which made sense to me.  The pilot rating cards clearly establish the value of that particular character and the overall mythology of Star Wars plays largely in the context of how each ship is used under different circumstances.  But the operative word was value—it was refreshing to look at a card from Fantasy Flight Games and establish the value of a game character with the stats presented.

I pretty much picked my squad for the tournament, but the experience of doing it was actually relieving because of the exercise of value associated with the task.  Others across the world are doing the same thing for the same reasons.  The reason this is important is because of the modern trend pushed in public schools throughout the world has attempted to present this ideal that all people are equal no matter what their effort is, their skill, and all associated characteristics.  We know now in hindsight that this desire for equality is a task perpetuated by communists for years and this is how such a thing came to our public schools.  Yet society is rejecting such notions through their art—their movies, their reading material, and especially in the games they play.

The X-Wing Miniatures game is not just an American game, although it is an American invention.  It is growing in popularity enormously since I first started writing about it, and is about to explode.  For years I have watched with a level of suspicion how gamers played Magic the Gathering and other types of games with great intensity.  I knew that the reason they did such a thing was because the fantasy of the game was something that was more appealing than the options presented in real life.  I never enjoyed card games and board games much—especially games like Poker because of their association with gambling—which I personally despise.  But I do love stories and mythology and I see these new games which were just being invented when I was a kid with Dungeons and Dragons, quickly taking over the old games—which is good.

I have often listened for hours the broadcasts of the Cincinnati Reds and wondered how many grown adults found the stats of the baseball players so endlessly fascinating yet turned around and supported socialism in their workplaces, their education institutions, and even their families.  Each game in baseball is pretty meaningless in the context of plot—yet broadcasters have found ways to make every game sound compelling.  I have also watched for years gamblers obsessed with horse racing, dog racing, NASCAR racing and willing to spend their entire paychecks on a gamble as to who will win and how.  I now see that changing among the new generations—starting with my age group on down.

This new form of gaming is centered on mythology.  Each game of X-Wing Miniatures forces players to embark in a kind of story during their play.  The value of the cards drive the dialogue—for instance a typical squad build for me is one called within the gaming community as a “Han Shoots First.”  It is because Han Solo has such a high pilot rating and typically gets to shoot first during the combat phase of game play.  This build involves the Millennium Falcon and one or two ships of lesser pilot value to provide wingman support. Just the construction of that build creates a storyline which must be played out, whereas in Poker or Blackjack there is only the value on the card which a player then uses to their advantage or not depending on circumstances.  In these new games the same thing is happening, but there is much more to it—mythology is a part of the experience and that driver of the drama in these stories is brought about because of values that must be attributed.

It is for this reason that I am absolutely salivating over the arrival of my huge Rebel Transport.  Just this past week Fantasy Flight Games published the new rules for using the “Huge Ships” in game play and after reading them I was immensely impressed.  X-Wing Miniatures is very interesting to play and it is ever evolving.  It literally changes every three months and this seems to be the appeal of these new games over the old ones.  Check out some of those rules for yourself at the following link:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4775

The reason that Baseball is declining in America is because the new generations cannot relate to it.  The game is too slow and the plots of the game do not provide an entertainment value that can compete with games like Magic the Gathering and now X-Wing Miniatures.  While baseball a few years ago looked the other way to allow Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa to fight it out with a season long steroid driven home run derby, the passion for the game really didn’t exceed beyond the borders of The United States.  Japan took to the drama, but really, nobody else could relate.   However in just a year, Fantasy Flight Games has published a game that has people lining up for weekend long tournaments all over the world—and it isn’t just because a movie which is three decades old is so popular, but because players can immerse themselves in a storyline that reflects their values.  The very act of playing such a game is an exercise of identifying value—and this translates directly to the real world.

Most of the people who play X-Wing Miniatures are smart.  They love to think.  The whole premise of such a game is to think.  It’s not based on random luck, or the hope that a passive third-party will be successful and garner victory for the bet placer, X-Wing Miniatures is all about participating in a mythology that is very similar to reading—but exists in a kind of in-between world where the storyline is the responsibility of the players.  Players are responsible for making their own drama, their own stories—and the stories are value driven.  In order to be successful, players must learn to ascertain values.  This is a tremendous new element to recreational gaming.  The participants aren’t passive, but are in fact very active in that process which is why these games are so vastly popular.

It is why I sought those cards after a rough week; it is why people all over the world are looking forward to tournament play for the Wave 4 ships, and why people like me everywhere are watching their mailboxes for the new Rebel Transport.  Many of our modern problems are due to the fact that the games the previous generations played often put the burden of decision-making on randomness and passive participation—such as guessing the outcome of a gambling scenario be it horse racing or a roulette wheel.  Players of those types of games have also voted in their republics in the same manner—they have passively participated then grumbled when the results did not go in their favor. These new gamers, the X-Wing players are “active.”  By watching how this new Fantasy Flight Games invention has taken off—literally, the people who play that game will have a much different role in their future decision-making endeavors—such as how they vote, and who they vote for in democratic elections.  And it gives me assurance to know that the mistakes of the past will not proceed into the future which makes X-Wing players some of my favorite people anywhere.  Their numbers are likely already greater than those in any Tea Party activity and is expanding by the day.  They represent a new demographic that will approach the future with a new sophistication that simply wasn’t present at any point in the past prior to the 1970s.

In 1974 Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson first published Dungeons and Dragons and have since grown into over a billion dollars in sales.  It was the first tabletop strategic game of its kind.  Star Wars: X-Wing is the natural evolution of this gaming type and evidence that human beings in all their vast capacity to think and imagine—can actually create recreation to heal themselves—as a species.  Because that is what these games represent to me—healing—they bring to the human mind what it most desires, to think, to assess value, and to create their own storylines.  And I can’t think of anything more valuable than that—and I love to see that America is exporting to the rest of the world something that does such things in a positive and creative way.  I am really looking forward to the Assault on Imdaar Alpha.

Rich Hoffman   www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals: Taking new members

My argument as to why Disney World is the happiest place on earth, and why so many people love that popular vacation destination is because of what the films, television shows, and theme parks ultimately represent—traditional American value. One of my most popular articles is about the publication of the Ayn Rand pamphlet sent to filmmakers in 1947 warning them of the communist infiltration in America at the time. Few people these days know what a battle raged in those times which was so pervasive that written works like Ayn Rand’s work was even needed. Communism was so robust that a group of Hollywood film industry professionals got together to form the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals and two of my favorite entertainment personalities of all time were in it, John Wayne and Walt Disney. Disney would continue his pursuit of the values from that alliance the rest of his life and Disney World is the living tradition of his firm commitment to the values of the MPAPAI. You can see the Ayn Rand pamphlet and the values of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of the American Ideals at the following link. They represent my America, and if you are reading this likely your values too. If you enjoy Disney World it is likely you are one of these people. The company of Disney today has been infested by progressives, and lawyers sensitive to progressive causes. But they cannot stray too far from the formula that makes them money and that is their theme parks which are undeniable references to Disney’s commitment to the MPAPAI. Because of Disney, American has not completely lost its way and the message of the MPAPAI has not been lost.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2012/06/06/screen-guide-for-americans-ayn-rand-walt-disney-and-ronald-reagan-tried-to-warn-america/

 

The Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals (MPAPAI, also MPA) was an American organization of high-profile, politically conservative members of the Hollywood film industry. It was formed in 1944 for the stated purpose of defending the film industry, and the country as a whole, against what its founders claimed was communist and fascist infiltration.[1][2]

The initial, immediate purpose in forming the organization was to assemble a group of well-known show business figures willing to attest, under oath, before Congress to the supposed presence of Communists in their industry.[3] And indeed, when the House Un-American Activities Committee investigated the motion picture industry, the vast majority of “friendly witnesses” were supplied by the Alliance.[3][4][5]

Prominent members of the Alliance included Robert Arthur, Martin Berkeley, Ward Bond, Walter Brennan, Clarence Brown, Charles Coburn, Gary Cooper, Laraine Day, Cecil B. DeMille, Walt Disney, Irene Dunne, Victor Fleming, Clark Gable, Cedric Gibbons, Hedda Hopper, Leo McCarey, James Kevin McGuinness, Adolphe Menjou, George Murphy, Fred Niblo, Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan, Ginger Rogers, Morrie Ryskind, Norman Taurog, Robert Taylor, Barbara Stanwyck, King Vidor, John Wayne, Frank Wead and Sam Wood.[3][5][6][7]

The Alliance officially disbanded in 1975.[8]

John Wayne served four one year terms as president of the Alliance starting in March, 1949.[9]

Shortly after its formation in 1944, the Alliance issued a “Statement of Principles:”

We believe in, and like, the American way of life: the liberty and freedom which generations before us have fought to create and preserve; the freedom to speak, to think, to live, to worship, to work, and to govern ourselves as individuals, as free men; the right to succeed or fail as free men, according to the measure of our ability and our strength.

Believing in these things, we find ourselves in sharp revolt against a rising tide of communism, fascism, and kindred beliefs, that seek by subversive means to undermine and change this way of life; groups that have forfeited their right to exist in this country of ours, because they seek to achieve their change by means other than the vested procedure of the ballot and to deny the right of the majority opinion of the people to rule.

In our special field of motion pictures, we resent the growing impression that this industry is made of, and dominated by, Communists, radicals, and crackpots. We believe that we represent the vast majority of the people who serve this great medium of expression. But unfortunately it has been an unorganized majority. This has been almost inevitable. The very love of freedom, of the rights of the individual, make this great majority reluctant to organize. But now we must, or we shall meanly lose “the last, best hope on earth.”

As Americans, we have no new plan to offer. We want no new plan, we want only to defend against its enemies that which is our priceless heritage; that freedom which has given man, in this country, the fullest life and the richest expression the world has ever known; that system which, in the present emergency, has fathered an effort that, more than any other single factor, will make possible the winning of this war.

As members of the motion-picture industry, we must face and accept an especial responsibility. Motion pictures are inescapably one of the world’s greatest forces for influencing public thought and opinion, both at home and abroad. In this fact lies a solemn obligation. We refuse to permit the effort of Communist, Fascist, and other totalitarian-minded groups to pervert this powerful medium into an instrument for the dissemination of un-American ideas and beliefs. We pledge ourselves to fight, with every means at our organized command, any effort of any group or individual, to divert the loyalty of the screen from the free America that give it birth. And to dedicate our work, in the fullest possible measure, to the presentation of the American scene, its standards and its freedoms, its beliefs and its ideals, as we know them and believe in them.[2]

In 1947, Ayn Rand wrote a pamphlet for the Alliance, entitled Screen Guide for Americans, based on her personal impressions of the American film industry. It read, in excerpt:

The purpose of the Communists in Hollywood is not the production of political movies openly advocating Communism. Their purpose is to corrupt our moral premises by corrupting non-political movies — by introducing small, casual bits of propaganda into innocent stories — thus making people absorb the basic principles of Collectivism by indirection and implication.

The principle of free speech requires that we do not use police force to forbid the Communists the expression of their ideas — which means that we do not pass laws forbidding them to speak. But the principle of free speech does not require that we furnish the Communists with the means to preach their ideas, and does not imply that we owe them jobs and support to advocate our own destruction at our own expense.[10][11]

Rand cited examples of popular and critically acclaimed films that in her view contained hidden Communist or Collectivist messages that had not been recognized as such, even by conservatives. Examples included The Best Years of Our Lives (because it portrayed businessmen negatively, and suggested that bankers should give veterans collateral-free loans), and A Song to Remember (because it implied that Chopin sacrificed himself for a patriotic cause rather than devoting himself to his music).[12]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Alliance_for_the_Preservation_of_American_Ideals

In the end communism did win. After the McCarthy hearings of which the MPAPAI fueled, the communists won the battle of public relations. Communist infiltration of American education had produced a generation of young progressives not sympathetic to the values of the MPAPAI so McCarty was cast away into irrelevancy; the MPAPAI was disbanded after the deaths of Disney and others from his generation. John Wayne who was such an important part of the MPAPAI died just a few years later, and Ayn Rand a few years after that. Ronald Reagan who was a part of the MPAPAI went on to become President of The United States and brought at least the illusion of the MPAPAI to America once again, but after 1988, the last remnants of this important group lost its political influence as progressive global unifiers like George Bush and Bill Clinton rose to power.

Now few people know what the values of the MPAPAI are. Public schools have sold socialism to three generations of American students and communism has spread into virtually every branch of government through legal case-law. Most law students who filled political offices from the time of the MPAPAI never studied the American Constitution; they instead studied case law from the Supreme Court which was a design by the communist infiltration of law schools as far back as the 1940s to slowly erode away Americans from their “Ideals.” Those lawyers have taken America toward communism in virtually every scenario for which they have endeavored through their extensive progressive educations. The only trace of the MPAPAI today is old John Wayne movies, Disney World, and the hot selling novel Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand.

The continued popularity of both John Wayne and Disney World provides a view into the true heart of America. Even with all the progressive educations which have corrupted their minds, most people still yearn for the ideals of the MPAPAI. Communism has not won the hearts and minds of America—just the policy. And that is as far as they will ever get. Disney World is not about Goofy, Mickey Mouse or Cinderella castle—it is about American value and tradition which is not at all disguised there. Disney World is a popular vacation destination because of how it makes people feel—because it is about American ideals and visitors want to be close to those ideals. Every time I think of Disney World it reminds me that communism did not get its way—that they did not win completely. It also reminds me that the good work done by the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals is still alive. And I intend to help keep it that  way.

Rich Hoffman   www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Harald Zieger Author of ‘Freedom’s Nightmare’: How modern education is like the Berlin Wall

One of the best interviews at this year’s Cincinnati Tea Party was author Harald Zieger who wrote the book, Freedom’s Nightmare, which is about how he escaped communist oppression to come to America. In the book he discusses some of the threats to our current liberties which remind him of his life behind the Iron Curtain. Matt Clark from WAAM radio sat down with Harald at the event and had a fantastic interview with him. Harald actually brought up during the interview something that I have been saying for a long time—American education has been taken over by the state and is intent on programming young people into the goals of statism—and less directly, communism. This is the natural byproduct of a government-run education system which often begins with good intentions—like most things—but quickly becomes a path to Hell. That Hell, is the current state of education in our country and is probably the most alarming aspect of the various facets of modern culture. For Harald Zieger, who grew up behind the Iron Curtain—specifically Soviet controlled East Germany—he has seen all this before which was revealed during this riveting interview with Matt.

http://www.amazon.com/Freedoms-NIghtmare-Harald-Zieger/dp/1629944289

Even I am surprised how many people to this day know nothing of the Berlin Wall in Germany or its history which has been lost to academic ideology. The same policies which put up the Berlin Wall so many years ago, just seven years before my birth are happening in America today—only at a much slower rate. The slow rate is quite on purpose so not to shock the world into rejecting the communist plight—as happened in the standoff between West and East Berlin at the height of the Cold War.

The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer) was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off (by land) West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin.[1] The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls,[2] which circumscribed a wide area (later known as the “death strip”) that contained anti-vehicle trenches, “fakir beds” and other defenses. The Eastern Bloc claimed that the wall was erected to protect its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the “will of the people” in building a socialist state in East Germany. In practice, the Wall served to prevent the massive emigration and defection that marked East Germany and the communist Eastern Bloc during the post-World War II period.

The Berlin Wall was officially referred to as the “Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart” (German: Antifaschistischer Schutzwall) by GDR authorities, implying that neighbouring West Germany had not been fully de-Nazified.[3] The West Berlin city government sometimes referred to it as the “Wall of Shame“—a term coined by mayor Willy Brandt—while condemning the Wall’s restriction on freedom of movement. Along with the separate and much longer Inner German border (IGB), which demarcated the border between East and West Germany, it came to symbolize the “Iron Curtain” that separated Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War.

Before the Wall’s erection, 3.5 million East Germans circumvented Eastern Bloc emigration restrictions and defected from the GDR, many by crossing over the border from East Berlin into West Berlin, from where they could then travel to West Germany and other Western European countries. Between 1961 and 1989, the wall prevented almost all such emigration.[4] During this period, around 5,000 people attempted to escape over the wall, with an estimated death toll of over 100[5] in and around Berlin, although that claim is disputed.[6]

In 1989, a series of radical political changes occurred in the Eastern Bloc, associated with the liberalization of the Eastern Bloc’s authoritarian systems and the erosion of political power in the pro-Soviet governments in nearby Poland and Hungary. After several weeks of civil unrest, the East German government announced on 9 November 1989 that all GDR citizens could visit West Germany and West Berlin. Crowds of East Germans crossed and climbed onto the wall, joined by West Germans on the other side in a celebratory atmosphere. Over the next few weeks, a euphoric public and souvenir hunters chipped away parts of the wall; the governments later used industrial equipment to remove most of the rest. The physical Wall itself was primarily destroyed in 1990. The fall of the Berlin Wall paved the way for German reunification, which was formally concluded on 3 October 1990.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall

The reason for the wall was to actually contain the people who were fleeing from East Germany into the West—essentially from communism to capitalism. The race of which the Soviets were attempting to outpace was an erosion of world-wide support of communism by infiltrating the education institutions of all capitalist oriented countries. This is exclusively why there are so many liberals to this day in colleges and drive teacher unions in public schools. But the Soviets were too late. They implemented their plan, and did infiltrate the world’s education institutions but they ran out of other people’s money rather fast and bankrupted themselves. In East Berlin the situation was so dire that people actually risked being shot dead to even have the opportunity to live under capitalism as opposed to communism.   One of those people was Harald Zieger.

A liberal media cannot criticize Zieger’s experiences as blind rhetoric because unlike them, Harald actually lived through these hard times, so he is a unique authority on the subject in historical context. And Zieger says in his interview that the education system in America today is dangerously close to what the Soviets where using against their people in the times of the Berlin Wall. The fate of such education methods and the people under their instruction will be no different—yet progressives believe that if the approach to communism is different—slower, and more globally inclusive, that finally their massive plan of social collectivism will work. They are functioning from the same level of ignorance that the idiots who put up the Berlin Wall were functioning under. Their belief is that if capitalism is destroyed or people are denied access to “capitalist greed” then communism for the good of the people will be able to come into bloom. Yet if such a thing worked so well, it would be able to compete with capitalism and clearly in Berlin it wasn’t even close. Just a few years after World War II West Germany was thriving, while the Soviet controlled East Berlin was a hollowed out city that lacked any kind of economic vibrancy. The advocates of communism as they do today, believe that if people were forced into communism away from capitalism that all people would benefit. It’s the same foolish notion that believed that a giant wall would actually contain people from wanting to leave one political ideology for another. One represented oppression and overly micromanaged government control of everything—the other was freedom, and economic stimulation driven by human desire. The two mentalities couldn’t be further apart from each other and there isn’t any middle ground between the two—as many progressive believe today—when they speak of a “managed economy.”Ayn Rand

Today there isn’t a Berlin Wall, but there is a deep divide in America—there are people who believe in communism and people who believe in capitalism. They call both different names today than they did in the times of the Berlin Wall, but the differences are essentially the same. Communists otherwise known as progressives still believe that if they gain control of the media, the education system and the money supply that they can suppress the human desire for freedom. But they can’t. People just like Harald Zieger fled from East Germany into West Germany in search of freedom and opportunity. People still flee the government at every opportunity—and they always will no matter how many laws are created, or how much the government thinks it can tamper with an economy. The bottom line between capitalism and communism is one of initiative. Communism strives to control initiative, where capitalism rewards it. And there is nothing academia can do to alleviate that essential human trait—even though they have tried. The horror stories discussed by Harald Zieger actually happened, and are happening right now—only differently. Today the wall isn’t so easy to see, but the mentality is still present—and the intentions of the communists are just as real, and dangerous. They can be seen most effectively at your local public school. It is there where the modern Berlin Wall is built brick by brick—child by child—labor union by labor union consuming tax payer money in a war against private property that is fueled by a hatred of capitalism. It is happening not in some far away land from a different time—but in our own back yards, to our children, and our very lives.

Rich Hoffman  

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Lakota’s Greg Snyder Suspended: More abuse of power from public school teachers

I don’t normally give the Lakota school board credit, but they deserve some for the hard decision of reprimanding and suspending the famed band director Greg Snyder.  Snyder shortly after the disciplinary action took early retirement which takes place next February 20th 2015. At Lakota that is similar to punishing a star athlete who is a team’s bread and butter—it is difficult—but is something that must be done when impropriety is discovered.  The band director who took Cincinnati to the Tournament of Roses Parade and the famous Macy’s Day Parade used his $81,733 per year position to make at least $6000 additional dollars more in private lessons, and free travel for his family members.  Here are the details according to a good report from Channel 19 news in Cincinnati.

WEST CHESTER, OH (FOX19) –

Lakota West High School’s band director has been suspended for 17 days without pay after a district investigation found that he violated several policies and state laws, including using his official influence for personal gain.

A letter dated Monday to Greg Snyder, the district’s executive director of human resources outlines the conduct led to the suspension.

“Mr. Snyder, I must indicate to you that I am deeply concerned for your disregard for board of education policies, the Licensure of Professional Conduct, ethical considerations and other directives given by Lakota administration,” Diane Brunsman said. “This attitude and disregard is not acceptable and will not be tolerated.”

Snyder has conducted a band clinic for seventh, eighth and ninth grade students for nearly 20 years that’s never been a district sponsored event. Before the past two years, Snyder received the student participation fee money directly for the band clinic.

Snyder advertised the band clinic by posting a flyer that sits next to programs at band concerts and he made the flyer on his district-provided computer.  Snyder determines who receives money for the clinic.

The district said that conduct violated several policies and state laws, including the state’s prohibition against the use of official influence for personal gain.

Snyder also encouraged the hiring and payment of family members by the Upbeat Club band boosters for band camp. That violates state law that says public employees are not permitted to authorize or use their authority to secure a public contract for himself, relatives or business associates.

The district also said that Snyder hosted private lessons at his home for Lakota district students. Board policy required that he received permission for the lessons but the district found no records that he received the approval. The board found that Snyder gave students extra credit for taking private lessons.

Since at least 2004, Snyder received free school band-related trips from travel agencies. The district didn’t pay for the trips. Until a recent New York trip, Snyder arranged the traveling. He decided what vendors to use for travel services, Brunsman said.

The travel-related conduct violated several policies including the prohibition against the use of official influence for personal gain, the district said.

Brunsman found more alleged misconduct.

At last year’s band camp, a student was told by a college student to run laps while all staff and students went inside. The student passed out outside alone. The student’s father found the student and spoke to Snyder about the incident. But Snyder didn’t tell anyone at the district about the episode.

“You were the district employee in charge during this incident and failed to adequately supervise the students,” Brunsman wrote.

The district also said that a uniform vendor treats Snyder and his wife to a variety of places for dinner including Applebee’s, Skyline and an annual dinner at The Precinct or other Jeff Ruby restaurants. That too violates several policies or laws.

Snyder has agreed to retire/resign effective Feb. 20, 2015 or when he is eligible to retire through the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio with 35 years of service.

Snyder’s salary is $81,733.

Lakota West’s band has performed in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Tournament of Roses Parade.

http://www.fox19.com/story/25278628/fox19-investigates-lakota-accuses-band-director-of-violations

The school board did the right thing, even though it was surely difficult.  However, here is where attention needs to be directed.  The story was very cleverly released on the Thursday before Good Friday immediately after the release of the new teacher contract with the union where that same board agreed to pay over $2 million dollars more in raises to over 900 teachers just like Snyder, who are highly paid already.  The actions of Snyder who was an example at Lakota West of everything that was right about a teacher proved that the temptation to abuse power for personal gain is just too great, and even large wages cannot prevent the kind of greed that fueled his actions.

I can only use my own experiences for reference in judging Greg Snyder’s behavior which I’m sure levy apologists will attempt to declare is much to do about nothing.  Professionally, I do pretty well—so much so that my wife doesn’t have to work.  Just last weekend I spent some time with my friends at the The Whip Artistry Studio helping them do promotional work.  CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW.  At the conclusion of the event I was offered quite a lot of money for my services, which I turned down because I like the people involved and felt my pay-day had already come from other sources.  It didn’t cross my mind to charge money—not even remotely until a few hundred bucks were stuffed in my face which I refused.  A few days later some high level entertainers saw the work I was doing for WAAM radio at the Cincinnati Tea Party Tax Day and assumed I was highly paid talent producing a show.  When they discovered that I was doing everything for free, they were shocked.  I explained that it was passion that drove my actions, and I would never expect payment for doing what I enjoyed while helping friends.  For me the value is in doing something I feel passion for.  When I hear about Greg Snyder’s actions, if I had a nice position making a comfortable $81,000 dollar per year salary which is more than enough to live on—and I wanted to share that passion with students outside of school, I would never charge for extra classes or mentorship—and I’d pay for my own meals.  What Greg Snyder did was so ridiculously cheap and low-class.  He is just the latest example of a poor mind corrupted with terribly bad judgment at the Lakota school system.

The scary thing about Greg Snyder is that he is an example of what’s right in public schools, and not even he with a very comfortable wage can turn down the temptation to abuse power to enrich himself.  One of the reasons the school board stated that they needed to give teachers $2 million dollars in pay raises is because they wanted to retain their quality of teachers—yet Snyder is one of their examples of a quality teacher—a real school asset who was very well paid.  But the money wasn’t enough to keep him from abusing his power—so why would the school board think that throwing more money stolen from tax payer property values would alleviate future Greg Snyders from their poor conduct?   The answer is that they fail to recognize good teachers from bad ones.

Greg Snyder’s behavior is typical of employees protected by a labor union.  Even with all the media coverage, Snyder will still teach at the school until he is eligible for retirement, which is almost a year from now.  So the punishment is pretty toothless—except for the embarrassment of the experience.  Such labor unions like Lakota’s LEA is filled with these types of small-minded employees, who are so cheap mentally that their generous salary isn’t enough—they want more—and more—and more, levy after levy, after levy.  They are never happy because they are mentally empty vessels inside perpetually seeking to be filled.  There are not enough raises the school board could ever pass or taxes levied against the community that will stop the behavior of similar Greg Snyders.  Because Greg Snyder isn’t so good—it is just that the rest of public education is that bad.  A person capable of making the bad decisions of Lakota West’s band director is not a person who should be teaching children.  So what if they get to go to New York on Thanksgiving Day to participate in the Macy’s Parade—if to get there they had to pad the pockets of Greg Snyder and his wife to become a bit better.  It takes extra work to be better than the next competitor, and Snyder was charging students for that boost—so there is nothing special about Greg Snyder which is the heart of this story.  What was assumed about Snyder was that his bands were good because he was just better than other band directors.  The truth turns out to be that he was teaching in a rich district that had great benefits like being sent to The Precinct and other Jeff Ruby restaurants, accompanied with under the table cash from The Upbeat Club because the parents were willing to pay for their kids to get a bit of a boost in life.  Snyder was too cheap to cover those events with his voluminous paycheck.  Greg Snyder turned out to be just another typical example of a public employee—much more concerned with their payday than actually doing good work. And at Lakota he was considered one of the good ones.

Imagine what the bad ones are like—and out of the 900 teachers who just got a levy increase funded pay raise, you can bet there are employees in that mix who also make similar money as Snyder did under the LEA collective bargaining agreement who are so bad that they make Lakota’s band director look like a saint in comparison.

“Just as a note to Randy Oppenheimer, Lakota’s director of media and community relations who reads here quite often for obvious reasons—I put this story up after Easter was over, because you know how things are.  You released your story during a holiday weekend so that people would have their minds on other things and it would be dead by Sunday morning.  Clever move—so I waited until people were reengaged with reality before I commented on it.  You didn’t think I’d forget did you?  Surely not.” :  )  This little chess game between us wouldn’t be any fun otherwise.

 

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

The Emcee Doc Thompson: Future film and documentary production

It was kind of a funny story that took place at the 2014 Cincinnati Tea Party Tax Day Rally in Eastgate, Ohio.  Doc Thompson was brought in to perform as emcee, however, when the event began he was outside the crowd filled room on the radio with Matt Clark leaving Ann Becker standing at the podium waiting.  So I had to get Doc off the radio and fill in for him during the broadcast so he could begin the ceremony.  You can hear that exchange below as Doc and Matt were involved in an interview for WAAM Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Doc as usual came in and did several segments of ad lib, with no notes to speak of.  He didn’t even know that he was emcee for the event as he had just returned from Dallas, Texas where he was hanging out with Glenn Beck’s group at The Blaze—where they are moving into film and television production.  Doc and his radio partner Skip LeCombe had just finished the post production duties for a new documentary they are producing about the effectiveness of the Tea Party over the last five years—and are planning many more projects.  Glenn Beck is in production on three motion pictures at his Dallas studios, so things are moving quickly for Doc Thompson.  He came to the Cincinnati event on a whirlwind fresh off an airplane and didn’t know that Ann had slotted him to be emcee.  When I told him that he was the emcee he was surprised, but happy to fill the role.  Then he forgot about again it during his radio segment with Matt Clark.

As can be seen below, Doc doesn’t need notes.  He does so much radio every day from 6 AM to 9 AM on The Blaze Radio Network that he can just rattle off statistics and current events from memory.  He occasionally does television on The Blaze, so he has become very proficient at public speaking.  He was always good at it, but now it’s effortless for him.

During Doc’s radio segment with Matt he hit on something that is at the core of a huge modern problem.  Doc is moving beyond just providing radio commentary.  If you are a conservative, there are not film production venues out there that can currently represent our viewpoints.  Not that long ago in Hollywood conservatives like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood were openly attending Republican conventions in Los Angeles—but now, a Republican cannot be found in mainstream Hollywood—until very recently.  One of the reasons the Atlas Production Company had to be formed was to actually produce the novel, Atlas Shrugged—because Hollywood was not interested.

I have been to film festivals and at those events, there are seldom openly conservative films because it is well-known that projects with those kinds of messages will not get play—there is nowhere to distribute those types of creations—until now.  Prior to Glenn Beck’s Blaze television station, there was not a single conservative distribution outlet for a conservative project.  Anyone who wanted to make such a thing these days had to invent not just the product, but the production company as well, making funding of those types of projects even more difficult.  For instance, when my novel Tail of the Dragon hit the market the people who read it all agreed that it would make a great movie, it had product placement tie-ins, a strong NASCAR type storyline, and had its roots in traditional American film.  I would thank them, but in the back of my mind was—who would make it—Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, Paramount……………Amblin, would Harvey Weinstein at Miramax make a movie of the novel—of course not.  As a progressive Harvey would be repulsed by my material.  Not even Jerry Bruckheimer was able to overcome the hatred of conservative values in Hollywood with the Disney backed The Lone Ranger starring Johnny Depp.  The Hollywood machine hated the ideal of a modern western taking America back to the good ol’ days, so they attacked the film out of the gate.  It is nearly impossible to produce conservative projects like movies and documentaries unless a production company is created to make them.  Even then, distribution outlets are even scarcer—until now.  Perhaps Depp’s heart is changing with time and wisdom, his new fiancé is Amber Heard, who is a bisexual and would otherwise be touted among the Hollywood elite with welcome arms—except that she is a huge Ayn Rand fan.  That represents part of an emerging undercurrent that cannot be stopped and Hollywood is not happy about it.

Among conservatives like Doc, Beck, the Atlas Shrugged guys, and me we are all approaching our projects from the ground level.  The Steven Spielberg’s of our day are not able to provide the kind of mentorship that he had learning from Hitchcock and other notable directors from the past, because they are afraid to be associated with conservatives—for fear of blacklisting.  Some great filmmakers like Gerald Molen have broken loose from Hollywood and are now associating with Glenn Beck’s studios—and more are on the way.  But things are now changing because technology has given power to conservatives to bypass the studio system if they can figure out the distribution issue—and now that Doc has The Blaze at his back, he is making his move.

A few years ago I had the very grim realization that only I could make a project I had written into the kind of movie I wanted to see.  I had worked with selling to Hollywood for years but they never understood what I was trying to do.  I was sitting with some very notable Hollywood types at a restaurant in Glendale where belly dancers were performing and everyone wanted to think of themselves as very worldly.  The women were dressed in the latest fashion all perfumed up, and the men looked cut from the pages of GQ.  I had on camouflage pants and my outback hat with Gargoyle sunglasses and they accepted me well enough.  I cracked my whips in front of a movie theater on Brand Blvd and cut targets out of people’s mouths and everyone was having a delightful time—until someone brought up politics.  I voiced my opinion and that was the end of a productive evening.  They didn’t want to understand my Midwestern sensibilities, my position against public education, my views on small government, my hatred of Marxism, and my love of traditional westerns.

It’s not that people didn’t agree with me—often they do—but in a town run by progressive labor unions, and Hollywood is, it is hard to get work unless you are properly politically aligned.  And it is nearly impossible to even make a movie unless Hollywood is backing the project at least through distribution.  I have never known a single independent filmmaker who didn’t enter a film at Sundance or some other place like the Cannes Film Festival and hope that Hollywood picked up the project for distribution.  A Tea Party documentary is not the way to get distribution in Hollywood, and neither is a western.  Even though Disney has the power and money to produce a film like that, and even distribute it—the town of Hollywood attacked it through their critics and trade magazines to preserve their industry.  The same thing happened to the Atlas Shrugged films.

When I watch the Atlas films, or the Dinesh D’Souza’s documentaries, or even Glenn Beck’s documentaries there is something unpolished about them—even though the filmmakers are often industry professionals.  I attribute a lot of this to the fresh perspective of conservatism being represented once again in the film industry more than any lack of experience in film production.  But the key to reaching a public is through those methods and unless conservatives retake the film industry, the plight of traditional values returning to mainstream America is nearly impossible.

Doc is now moving into that realm.  His Tea Party documentary is just the first step.  He and I are planning to work on a project together, and I am planning things of my own.  It has taken time for me to assemble my thoughts on the matter, but I’m nearly there.  Like a lot of things, I had to go through a process of unlearning what was taught to me and that is matching up with the magnificent tools that are now at the disposal of anybody who dares to use them.

As usual, it was good to see Doc, and this year had a different feel to it than in times past—where a sense of desperation was ever-present.  This time we all had a presence of veterans who had been around and done most everything before.  Like I said on the air with Matt while sitting in for Doc Thompson as he went to emcee the Tea Party event, conservatives are getting better at putting our message out—and that is something that the other side is significantly terrified of.  In the future, there will be a lot more conservative competition in visual arts than there has been, and that is something to be very excited about.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Rich Hoffman Told You: Lakota gives over $2 million in raises to their teachers

Don’t say I didn’t tell you so, because I did.  I told the world over the radio, in newspapers, and in countless online articles that Lakota’s levy passage in 2013 was about one thing—giving their teachers raises for unaccountable performance.  Over this last week the Lakota school board kissed the feet of Sharon Mays, the Lakota Education Association president—particularly Julie Shaffer by providing not even a hint of resistance throwing money that was just approved in November for so-called security issues “for the children,” at the union.  The school board unanimously approved a $2,200 dollar salary increase for over 900 teachers which equate out to over $2 million dollars in increases— a huge portion of the money confiscated through the new tax increase.  Now that you dear reader have seen what Lakota did with the money they extracted from the public through a manipulative campaign where they played to the sympathies of the public, spent thousands and thousands of tax dollars on public relations strategies—it all came down to teacher pay increases just like I said it would—exactly.  Here is the video I put up prior to the 2013 election and my prediction for 2017.  Watch closely…………………….

Notice in that video what I said about 2017.  Well, guess what, the contract that Julie and Sharon just ratified together runs out June 30th, 2017.  Guess what happens then—more pay raises are expected just as the chart in my video shows—right on schedule.  Of course Julie, who is the representative of the union on the school board had good negotiations with the LEA.  She was their girl all along—that was evident as far back as when I debated her on 700 WLW before Scott Sloan’s wife put the clamps down on him so she could sell more homes as a realtor.  The sliced elective classes, the busing, the sports fees were all part of the extraction process.  As soon as the union realized they were going to get what they wanted, Lakota voted to give many of those things back to the public.  The game all along was to hold the public hostage until the union got their money.  Now that they have it, things can return to normal—its all part of the extortion racket set up in virtually all public schools.

The next move for the union was to allow the school rating to decrease from Excellent with Distinction.  If the November levy didn’t pass, that was the next step by the school board, superintendent, and their friends in the labor union.  There was already pressure from outside finance to alter the bond rating, which had to be averted because of the failed levies—and many of my friends on the No Lakota side knew that.  The radicals at Lakota contemplated letting the Excellent rating slip—which is mostly politics anyway.  This would drop the bond rating and throw the burden back on the No Voters.  That was too much for many of them to deal with, because that would have an immediate impact on realtor sales.  That is nearly the same type of dilemma that Congress faces when they decide whether or not to raise the debt ceiling.  It might be the morally correct thing to do—to not raise it—but in so doing the economy is wrecked.  The real problem is the debt spending, but the radicals spending the money use that dilemma to their advantage to prevent management action—so nothing happens because nobody wants to take the hit on their watch.  At Lakota if the 2013 levy did not pass, this was the union’s next step, to let the bond rating slip and drop the Excellent with Distinction certification to a level lower.  School board members of course didn’t want this to happen while they were in office, but the LEA union was fully prepared to employ that strategy.  That’s how much they care for the “children.”

I of course stood against the levy, even though I knew what was coming next.  For that I was personally attacked in many different ways and told that I should move from the district.  Even Scott Sloan who originally supported the No Lakota Levy position on the radio advocated that those against the Lakota tax should just move to another community if they didn’t want to see levy passage.  This was just an asinine position.   I have lived in Liberty Township since before a lot of the levy supporters in Lakota were even born, and I was told that I should surrender my home to all these panicky parents and radicalized left-leaning teachers just because they wanted more money.  That is how stupid the whole argument was—and continues to be.  Fairfield failed their levy in November and guess what—six months later it is back on the ballot and will continue to be until the unions get their money from the public.  Every time a levy is failed, the crazy union policy is to take more and more away from the public until they give in and pass a levy. The newspapers, television news, all mainstream outlets are all in on the heist because ultimately, property has been connected to these public schools which is the last line of defense for the union, an arrangement concocted through politics.

This problem will continue on until people no longer care about having their property values attached to a public school.  Lakota is near that saturation point, but is not quite there.  Liberty Township has a lot of out-of-state investment pouring into it from people moving into the area from other places—typically more progressive places like the East Coast and they bring with them these high tax trends which will last for about 15 years and taper off once a new hot spot is designated.  Currently these types of people outnumber homeowners like me who have been in the area for much longer than they have.  Through democracy they have the ability to pillage the land and its resources, and then leave it like an empty carcass.  They treat Liberty Township like the tail of a shrimp at a fine restaurant.  They dip the tail in a sauce and suck out all the meat leaving the remnants of a shell on a plate to be thrown away.  That is what Pro Levy voters and the labor union at Lakota are doing—and the school board lets them do it.

So what’s next?  Well, there will be another levy in 2017—as I predicted.   There will be another in 2023 as well and taxes will then become unsustainable for residents and businesses.  There will be a short-term influx of wealth created through this new labor contract as even No Lakota Levy people were happy to see the levy pass so not to affect the developments of Carriage Hill and Liberty Center.  But that will diminish as well over a fairly short period of time.  The battle plan of the radicals is fully set, and there just aren’t enough people with the stomach to stand against them—which they know.  As for me, I’ll continue to stand against the tax increases.  As it has been noticed, my focus lately has been on larger issues—the origin problems of how this whole system was constructed.  I have no desire to deal with the effects.  Doc Thompson and I are planning a documentary which was originally scheduled to shoot this past winter, but has been moved to the summer.  In it we plan to interview former Lakota school board members to tell a national story of how and why public education is a travesty and parasitic failure.  The documentary is set to be released through Doc’s affiliation with The Blaze—Glenn Beck’s vast Dallas-based enterprise.  I presented this material to everyone prior to the vote—what the teacher’s union planned to do with the money, but voters chose to preserve their level of comfort over the long-term sustainability of the district.   They picked short-term thinking over long-term management—and the levy narrowly passed.  Celebrations among progressive groups attached to public education erupted, because they knew the money tree had been turned back on and the scam known as public education was once again yielding fruit.  So for me, the next step is to attack the foundation of this debacle—and not the effect.

Lakota certainly mislead the public.  Sheriff Jones participated—he said during the levy campaign that the money was going to go toward security at the schools.  Well—guess what?  Now Liberty Township is seeking a levy to pay for police—for the schools. The two public employee unions, the FOP in Butler County and the LEA at Lakota are trying to double tax the residents of Liberty Township and they hope people are too asleep to notice.  That’s why the press release was put out for Lakota during the spring break period just ahead of Good Friday—while most people are otherwise distracted before the May 8th vote for the police levy, where residents can actually put some tax money back in their pocket.  Most levy supporters are too busy to pay attention to all these issues between soccer practices, career obligations, and the television shows stacking up on their DVR machines.  All these technical details are just too much to pay attention to—so they continue to vote foolishly to tax themselves—and Lakota knew all along that even though I was publishing their plans so people could vote accordingly, that in the end people either didn’t care enough to act, or were afraid of the results.  And thus—the teachers got what they wanted—more money.  Now they can go back to sexting students and enjoying one of the few professions in the world where they can make so much money doing virtually nothing but spreading left-winged political ideology and babysitting for parents who lack personal management.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

The Cliven Bundy Standoff: Pacifism versus resistance in response to an aggressive federal government

Before Doc Thompson or Rusty Humphries was on the radio with Matt Clark I was his first interview while doing a live podcast from the Cincinnati Tea Party Tax Day Rally.  As I was speaking with Matt on his WAAM broadcast out of Ann Arbor, Michigan I felt him cringe next to me as I indicated that I was actually looking forward to the time when the federal government came to my home to attempt to take me away on a train during some future purge.  Saying such things, especially in today’s overly sensitive climate of hyper sensitivity can quickly label you as an extremist—and is the kind of thing that mainstream talk show hosts like Matt Clark, Doc Thompson and Glenn Beck avoid.  But I was being truthful.  As I was giving my interview I had Cliven Bundy on my mind as the federal government and he were involved in standoff over a cattle grazing incident on claimed federal land.  Bundy refused to pay the proper fees for using that land.  The situation came very close to escalating into an armed engagement—and was what I believe to be a sign of things to come.  When that time comes to me, I know how I’ll deal with it—and it won’t be with protest signs and strongly worded letters.  I wasn’t kidding when I said I was looking forward to such a time.  I am tired of having the pretense of civility when it is so grossly obvious that the federal government is using law as a club to impose wealth grabs and redistribution of resources they deem worthy by force—then not expecting anybody to resist them.  Just off the top of my head are the lies of Fast and Furious, Benghazi, the IRS scandal, the treachery of Common Core directly attempting to reprogram our youth into progressive soldiers, the school levies that are defeated in November only to be put back on the ballot in May—because they are  socialist attacks on American private property.  There are serious impositions on American life that are simply inexcusable and eventual confrontation is inevitable between the forces of good, and the progressive parasites intent to social engineer all life on earth to their philosophy.

I am sympathetic to Cliven Bundy, his issue which is explained properly by Glenn Beck below in an interview with him is really about the old Nevada rancher refusing to acknowledge the acquisition of land which has been in his family for a century.  Bundy is refusing to acknowledge the legal power the government has given itself to force him to pay grazing fees for land that it has no real technical right to claim a fee for him to pay.  Bundy is simply not recognizing the power of the federal government in a legal issue which it controls from a legal perspective.

My observations of the federal government, and I’m saying this for future reference, is that it is incompetent and not able to properly manage basic finance, let alone wealth creation strategies or a proper interpretation of justice.  The government as it is today is filled with poorly constructed minds deeply prone to error and cover-up, and they cannot be trusted.  The only way to deal with them on their terms is to surrender logic, and thought to the ease of their appeasement—and I’m not willing to do that.

When I was in the fifth grade a number of bullies surrounded me on the school bus.  The bullies were taking hits of speed in the form of a pill.  They wanted me to participate in that activity with them because they decided to do it in front of my eyes and wanted to make sure that I would not tell on them for their activity.  If they convinced me to also take hits of speed then I would be complicit in their crime—and would not have the moral ground to say anything against them.  So they tried at first to attract me to the drug by telling me how good it would feel.  But little did they know that I had then—and I still do—a very strict anti drug position.  I despise drugs—especially marijuana, speed, meth, and cocaine.  I don’t even like alcohol where intoxication is the goal.   There was nothing that those bullies could do to me to get me to take those hits of speed.  When I refused them, they then turned to violence hoping to convince me to take the path of least resistance and just swallow the speed.

The bullies encompassed the entire rear end of the school bus.  There were at least 8 kids directly involved and about 15 others who were passively supporting the activity.  The school bus driver was not equipped to handle the situation so refused to look at the activity in the mirror because she was also afraid of the boys.  Those same boys had been in trouble with the school principal many times, and had lost their respect for authority a long time ago.  They were unmanageable, and knew it.  So they were taking hits of speed on the school bus right in front of everyone just to prove that they could.  And the more who participated in the activity with them the stronger they became.  So when I refused their attempts to convince me to participate with them in the drug taking, they turned to violence.  They cornered me and tried to force me to take the speed with the threat of violence.  They put the pills in my hand and told me to swallow them otherwise they’d beat me up.  I threw the pills out the window behind me and a massive fight erupted.  I went to personal war with those boys for the next 8 years.  By the time those eight years concluded every one of the boys was in trouble for something and either moved away, or were not able to attend school any longer.  The violence really escalated in junior high school with some of the stories I have told here previously.  But a long story short, I was the last one standing as they collapsed on themselves.  If I had done what they wanted me to, my life would have been much different.  So would the lives of my children, and wife.  Because I fought through that situation, my family legacy is so much stronger—which became very important just ten years after the conclusion of the drug battle which started on the school bus.

The federal government is really no different from those drugged out bullies.  They want complicity in their crimes and use fear of violence to impose people to comply and become part of their zombie cult of mindless tax payers.  Cliven Bundy said no.  Many others are saying no, more and more people every day.  I have certainly said no.  I said no to the ridiculous brainwashing of the public schools, the failed economic policies, the paralyzing federal regulations, the EPA wackos using environmental terrorism to advance socialist politics, the many crimes and lies of the federal government corrupted by the two-party system—both controlled by radical political elements intent on social decay—and I refuse to be complicit in their activity.

I do have a lot of friends and associates who are in well placed positions—who are concerned about the perception of statements in relation to the Overton Window which has pulled the logic of America into a progressive direction. They are not progressives, but are concerned about feeding into a line of dialogue that progressives can twist around to their advantage.  However, the real intent of this strategy is no different from the school bus bullies trying to force innocent spectators into taking drugs.  They wanted to know that some “holier-than-thou” kid wouldn’t rat them out—and the best way to do that was to get the kid to participate in a crime with them.  The federal government has done the same with land grabs, taxation, social policy, and corrupt election procedures so to stay in power and collect the voluminous benefits of public office.  Federal officials like the school bus bullies simply put on suits and obtained law degrees.  They are still scum bags seeking complicity.

When those scum bags try to move me in some way or another against my will, trouble is insured for them.  I have lived my life in a way where I haven’t even allowed myself to be forced to take drugs under coercion.  So a federal government using force or manipulation against me will do no better.  Right now I do occasional radio shows talking about these things, and I write about them here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom, but at a certain point, those will no longer be effective outlets.  And I’m looking forward to it.  Because there is honesty in what Cliven Bundy did in Nevada.  It might seem radical or crazy from the perspective of legal analysts, Supreme Court professionals, and sell-out politicians—but it’s the right thing to do.   At a certain point, we all have to come to terms with the fact that most of American case-law has been formulated by corrupt minds who are simply bullies looking for drug consumption complicity.  Drugs aren’t always the kind taken and consumed through the human body—but the kind of thoughts injected into a mind.

Most of my media friends do not have the same kind of background that I do.  They are still trying to play the game of fitting in to the rules of the FCC.  Fortunately for them, they do not have backgrounds in violence..  When Glenn Beck states that Jesus, Martin Luther King, Gandhi and other peaceful pacifists achieved great things in the context of history—he’s right—but they are also all dead, or were unnecessarily jailed with their freedoms removed from them ultimately.  I would prefer that the world work with law, and respect, but it is obvious that the federal government has no interest in either—unless either allows them to confiscate wealth from those who produce it.  My life is more valuable than the greater good of a bunch of parasites, and they don’t have the right to remove me from my family, or my future in their quest for complicity.  I disagree with the pacifist approach, the approach that many who have FCC licenses hanging over their heads, or religions around their necks are imprisoned to.  I seek freedom from those restrictions also, and this is why I look forward to the day where the standoff off with destiny finally arrives.  In many ways I have been preparing for it my entire life.  It won’t be I who provokes it, but it will be my decision to ignore the case-law of thieves who have written laws to enrich themselves at the cost of value in a mindless—collective quest for complicity as they consume the drug of power that rots the human mind worse than any disease, any cancer, or mental ailment of treachery.  The future fight that I yearn for is not the lust of violence, but the defense of a mind, and its ability to think free of tyranny—a trait that cannot be preserved with pacification.

America would have never won its independence with peaceful protests and soft talk.  American independence had to be taken—with force.  And now that it has been seen how corrupt the United States federal government has been, I don’t see peace in the future if independence is to remain.  Elections do not work, and the laws are stacked against common men and women.  Generations of children have been brainwashed into statism and do not have the intellectual capacity to deal with these complicated matters—which is quite on purpose.  American society is surrounded by complicit individuals who may deep in their hearts be good, but are like the kids on that bus long ago afraid to stand up to the bullies, so they took the speed to keep from being beaten up.  But what was taken from them was their minds and moral standing which is forever tarnished by actions which were forced upon them.  That is why Cliven Bundy is right and the federal government is wrong.  It is also why I am looking forward to the future instead of being weary of it—because I enjoy such things.  The Bundy Ranch standoff is only the beginning.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Rusty Humphries at the Cincinnati Tea Party: Why “WINOs” are in a lot of trouble

imageI have been extraordinarily busy of late—much, much more than I care to be. My bullwhip friends from the Western Arts had of course my top priority and that occupied most of the last weekend. Then of course there are family obligations, normal career type commitments, a meeting Monday at the Elks Club for the Liberty Township Tea Party which I wrote about yesterday. Then there was the event on Tax Day out in Eastgate, the Cincinnati Tea Party rally which brought out some of the most vigilant patriots of the current liberty movement anywhere. Doc Thompson was there, Ann Becker and all her posse including Chris Littleton, Mike Wilson, Ted Stevenot and Libertarian Girl were there. Rusty Humphries flew in from his Washington Times gig representing the new Atlas Shrugged movie. My friend Matt Clark came down from Ann Arbor to do a live podcast from the event. There were many, many more names—all of them very good—and all of them fighting hard every day for what’s right by way of the American Constitution—but my time was occupied primarily by those names mentioned. To do the event justice, there is no way I can cover everything in a single article, so I’ll start with the Rusty Humphries speech, which can be seen below—and embodied the tone of the entire evening magnificently.

Rusty also did an interview with Matt Clark who was set up outside the main conference hall. The interview was every bit as entertaining as would be expected by Humphries who has a nationally syndicated radio show. He also writes for the Washington Times, and is even acting in the new Atlas Shrugged Part III movie. Watching he and Matt work together was like watching the present and future aligned. Matt Clark certainly has in his future a syndicated talk show as he shares with Humphries the ability to use social media to blast his message to the world. The only difference is that Humphries has been doing it longer, and already went through the kind of criticisms that Matt Clark often inflicts upon himself constantly looking for broadcast perfection.

All evening there was a constant steam of interviews which went through Matt Clark’s WAAM broadcast table, most of which will be featured over the next couple of days. One of the funniest comments made over the course of the evening was Humphries reference to Hillary Clinton. During his speech he talked about the various RINOs in politics, people like John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, any of the Bush brothers, etc. RINO of course means “Republican in Name Only,” which is to say that those so-called Republicans have been terrible at preserving conservative ideals. They’ve been more interested in compromising with people who want to fundamentally change American life, and have done a great disservice to their nation. This is when Humphries said that Hillary was a “WINO,” a “Wife in Name Only.” That drew quite a laugh and it stuck with me throughout the night.

The “WINO” comment was funny because most people feel that Bill and Hillary Clinton have an open relationship where they have simply pulled a ruse on the American public for more than three decades of scandalous crusade. Their mission as Marxist loving young college students was to deliver America to the doorsteps of the Socialist International controlled United Nations and they pretended to be like every day Americans to concoct the ruse. Part of that deceit was to pretend that they are a traditional married, husband and wife–while at the same time advancing LGBT agenda points and a gradual erosion of American sovereignty to the chaos of the world cesspool. Does anybody honestly feel that Hillary would not do anything to become elected into an office, even if it meant committing herself to a loveless marriage in the typical European style of power arrangement? I don’t doubt it for a moment, and it is likely that she cannot even relate to a typical American romantic comedy because she does not have the kind of feelings in her life associated with “love,” “passion,” or “sexual longing,” as her primary motives appear to be exclusively—for her entire life—committed to social reform built on a progressive reference established by Marxism—which she learned in college.

It was good to hear Humphries say what virtually everyone was thinking—it was therapeutic and was the primary reason that most of the hundreds and hundreds of people came to the Cincinnati Tea Party Rally on a Tuesday night. They needed relief from the insanity of a world spinning out-of-control and into perpetual progressive madness. The people present were awake and all aware of the follies around them—and having so many people in such a state gives hope that the world will not degrade into a bottomless pit from which it will never return.

Matt bought a hamburger for me once the event was over at the bar. We barely placed our order before the kitchen closed as the rally went late into the evening. Humphries had already left as many others were leaving, but Matt and I hadn’t had any food all day, so a well-earned hamburger was just the thing. Kelly Kohls and some of her party joined us in the bar for a bit as the waiter brought us our food. Kelly laughed when she saw the incredible size of my hamburger, complete with everything on it, onions hanging over the edge with huge leaves of lettuce, largely cut tomatoes and a tremendously huge bun sprinkled with sesame seeds. Her son happened to be sitting next to me and I took his mother’s comments and expanded on it by saying that this was an example of American food. “You wouldn’t get a hamburger like that in France, or Spain, or Italy. In those countries they give you some silly little noodles and some crappy vegetables off on the side of the plate—and they consider it art. Their food is like their crappy little Fiat cars, their bad breath, terrible economies, and wimpy sports. Here in America, like this hamburger,” which I had to put all my weight on to smash together to fit into my mouth, “we like V-8 engines, fast cars, violent sports, guns and women in thongs.” At that point Kelly called me a few names and took her 15-year-old son away from my bad influence. I told her that her son was a guy, and that he needed to hear those kinds of things. She laughed and hit me in the shoulder and walked off. I didn’t blame her, after all she is running for a Senate seat, and she needed to maintain her respectability in the eyes of the masses. But I don’t. Hamburgers, fast cars, rock music, football and chicks with thongs are the kinds of things I think of when I think of America—and specifically freedom. So after the evening festivities the gigantic hamburger from the hotel bar complete with Coors beer was the perfect night-cap to a busy day.

Much of what was discussed at the Cincinnati Tea Party could be summed up into not apologizing for what Americans are, but rather, being proud of it. It is clearly time to stop feeling sorry for every other country on earth and to make ourselves less just to make other countries feel equal. I know I’m done with such things, and according to Matt, Doc, Rusty, Ann, and all the others, they are too. The biggest difference between those at the Tax Day Rally and everyone outside of that room is that the attendees have arrived first to a conclusion that is inevitable—that progressives like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and many others, have taken America to a bad place, and people don’t like it. My friends are the first to express that displeasure—and soon, so will the rest of the nation. imageThe old WINO tricks won’t work this time, as an $18 trillion-dollar deficit looms over the richest nation in the world—caused by progressive mismanagement of American resources. And once the rest of society gets to the level of frustration that the people attending the Cincinnati Tea Party rally displayed on April 15th, 2014 in Eastgate, Ohio—WINO’s like Hillary will be in a whole lot of trouble—and I’ll celebrate with an even bigger hamburger. The secret to American excess is not that The United States consumes too many natural resources, but that it has produced so much—because of capitalism. If more nations throughout the world adopted capitalism over socialism, they’d discover excesses of their own and would be a whole lot less miserable.

Rich Hoffman  

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Lost Art of America: Putting out a candle with a bullwhip

Spending the weekend at The Whip Artistry Studio was a chance to touch base with the skills that mean the most to me. One of the bullwhip tricks of high regard for many of the people who come through Gery Deer’s classes taught at that facility is putting out a candle with the crack of a whip. Most bullwhip artists have their own style in cracking that are subtly different from one another. I am typically very aggressive, and when I put out candles I don’t care if I hit the candle tip, because I enjoy the satisfaction of seeing splashes of wax exploding outward, which can be seen in the following video done over the weekend.

However, Gery Deer is all about finesse. In the next video he instructs one of his students how to put out a candle the technically correct way, by cracking the whip just in front of the candle and using the sonic boom to create a negative pressure vacuum that is followed by a convection current which pushes out the flame like a breath. Gery explains this process to one of his students, and a general audience of casual spectators.  

There are few skills which are as traditional of the American lifestyle as the bullwhip—except for firearms of course. When I speak to people from other parts of the world, the topic of my bullwhip work always comes up, because they usually watch my videos before meeting me. In Japan, their culture is all about the undefeated samurai Miyamoto from The Book of Five Rings. Samurai swords are typical weapons of reverence even to this day in that culture. Elsewhere in the world are similar military celebrities of worship, such as in China with Sun Tzu from The Art of War. Europe has their Napoleon. Every culture has a reverence for how their societies were formed from violence and conquest. However, in America, the art forms of the Wild West were not so much of oppression over a conquered enemy, but over escaping oppression. Progressives have attempted to paint westward expansion in a negative light in America by capturing the plight of the mystic Native Americans and how they were abused under the hand of the cowboy, but this doesn’t pan out within the psychology of America. Most cowboys wanted the same things the Indians wanted—land, freedom, and a love of independence. Both had European style governments as their primary antagonists.

The bullwhip was a symbol of independence because the cowboy used them to herd cattle across the vast plains of ranch living. In remote parts of the world such as Australia they have taken the bullwhip to a high level of art as they still use them to herd livestock. Naturally, cowboys have developed cleaver ways to prove their accuracy with bullwhips, and putting out a candle is one of the highest forms of accuracy that can be achieved. It is proof that such a weapon can be used in a way to not just produce a random noise, but to actually make that noise appear in time and space at the complete control of the handler.

In my life professionally and privately, my work with bullwhips is unmistakably a part of how people see me. I use bullwhip metaphors in almost every facet of my life and no matter what level anybody is dealing with me, bullwhips always come into the conversation. And it gives me great pride to share those metaphors because bullwhips are weapons of precision, not just of brutality. They can be used to kill like a samurai Katana but such violent engagements can be averted almost every time with a carefully placed crack next to the ear of an aggressive adversary. More often than not, violence is avoided when the kind of skill it takes to put out a candle is applied to a contentious situation.

The girl in Gery’s video had never put out a candle before. Her very first time was in front of the camera, so once she had mastered a precise cut, all she needed to do was direct it where Gery told her to, and as can be seen, the flame went out. It really is that simple—but most things are. The bullwhip is a metaphor for some of life’s most complex problems. Once they are understood—they can all be made to look easy. When things appear overwhelming, and too vastly complex, the proper approach has not yet been discovered. In the bullwhip arts, putting out a candle with the crack of a whip is equivalent to declaring that the master has taken various complex elements of physics and simplified them to their desire. And once such things are done between a bullwhip and a flaming candle, they can be applied to everything in life. That is why such things are worth doing—and why I revere the work of bullwhip arts to be among the highest skills performed in reflection of American culture.

Rich Hoffman  

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com