Tag: philosophy

The Purple Headed Loser: Anti-gun activists attack the Kentucky Academy of Sports

In general, I’m a live and let die kind of guy. If you want to be a loser, I leave that decision to you to make unless you’ve injected yourself into my life in some way. People are free to do and think what they want, until they try to impose themselves on me. And that is exactly what Sydney Cooper has done with her purple hair and a body that is taking up way too much real estate is doing by protesting the Kentucky Academy of Sports for a raffle they had for the Holidays distributing guns to participants. The entire event was voluntary and the business of the people active with the raffle yet this anti-gun activist decided that it was within her right to impose her views on the rest of us with an anti-Second Amendment message, and she presented herself in a way that I consider insulting. I don’t like people who alter themselves especially with changing the color of their hair to purple. I think she looks disgusting and she is in all of our faces showing her desire to protest conformity with her appearance, yet thinks she has the right to lecture the rest of us. Not a smart thing to do young lady.

This purple haired kid apparently is the state director for Kentucky March for our Lives, which is one of these student groups moved to activism against our society of guns by the teacher’s unions and their progressive platform. The notion as she stated in her Channel 5 interview is that somehow, she believes that the raffle for guns is “tone deaf” to the sentiments of modern life. What’s tone deaf is that leftists like this girl think we care what she thinks, especially when she presents herself as such a disgusting reprobate. If she was going to do television, you’d think she might have at least worn something nice and respectable instead of presenting herself like a slob. I was embarrassed for her parents that the kid put herself on television looking like she should be marching for a gay pride parade. What’s tone deaf is that these leftist activist fail to understand that the gun culture we do have is essential to our freedoms. And their tone deafness is a choice because they want to attack us, and change it.

I personally didn’t ask to see her cake inflated face on my television lecturing us on gun violence aimed at children when the raffle itself was designed to raise money for children when it is well known that one of the best things you can do for a child is teach them to shoot and to be respectful of guns. It’s a great tool for teaching responsibility to children and a wonderful bonding agent from generation to generation. Perhaps if her parents had taught her to shoot guns and were active NRA members, maybe she wouldn’t have that ridiculous purple hair and be such a lost leftist sucking up to her teachers and their union talking points. As I’ve pointed out countless times these mass shootings are not caused by NRA members who hate losers like this girl, they are often affiliated by marijuana users who have a diabolical psychedelic reaction to the ingredients of pot smoking and the use of other depressants and anti-depressants. Why does anybody think that pot legalization has taken such a back seat this year—because the studies show that likely all the mass shooters over the last few years were active pot heads, and came from broken families.

The people of the Kentucky Academy of Sports are likely not much different than the typical NRA member, or the members of clubs I belong to such as the Cowboy Fast Draw Association where good hearted American values are promoted through teaching the next generation about responsible gun use, and the need to maintain the constitutions of the United States, at the federal and state levels, with guns. Even as I write this, diabolical politicians in Virginia are using their newfound Democrat majorities to contemplate a mandatory confiscation of firearms using the National Guard to do it. It’s all the talk at dinner parties in Democrat holiday gatherings. That’s where activist like this loser purple haired girl want to take our nation and to attack us like that during the sentiments of Christmas is insulting, and preposterous. I’m sure Channel 5 knew it would get such a reaction; it certainly got my attention. But the effort was insulting to say the least.

The most disrespectful aspect of this news report was the realization that we have lots of evidence to show just how bad and corrupt our present government is, and why they are very eager to disarm a public that might very well take up arms against them in a pursuit of much needed justice. Manipulating things the way that the establishment does—such as these teacher’s unions using kids to advocate for their progressive plot points—and the teacher’s unions are connected to politicians—and activist donors such as the George Soros types—they send out people like this purple headed freak to implore us to give up our guns and our essential love of freedom in exchange for what? This is the best spokesperson they could find, a gay rights looking advocate that certainly doesn’t look like the nice girl next door that we might want to protect a future for. She is what we don’t want, a society of tattooed freaks and dyed hair losers complaining about capitalism and advocating socialism. No thanks.

We’ll keep our guns, but Sydney Cooper and all her crazy haired friends from the March for our Lives movement are free to leave the country if they don’t like guns or the people who own them. They don’t have a right to change our America into their nightmare of drag queens, gay sex addicts, and drug users who are the real cause of gun violence in schools. Its not the guns that are the problems, it’s the kind of thinking that our schools are producing that is, those same anonymous figures that prop up the purple haired girl that are putting all these dumb ideas into these innocent little kids away from their parents. We know that our government is dangerous, that’s why we have the guns. And we know that the corruption of our government is so deep that it flows into every one of our public schools through the unions that the teacher’s bow to, and many of them are the voices behind this purple headed anti-gun activist. They are happy to use our young people as soldiers for the cause, and they don’t care who they hurt to achieve their objective.

Those who are “tone deaf” are those behind this girl, who want to do to this Kentucky Academy of Sports group just as they have with the Boy Scouts and many other traditional organizations. They attack and do not expect retaliation. They expect people to put down their guns for a complete government takeover of our way of life, which has been revealed in the attacks against the Trump administration, and they think we are so stupid that we’ll fall for the pleas from this purple headed loser who obviously doesn’t know much about life, and doesn’t respect our opinions enough to even dress up a bit for a big opportunity for television. Like most of the people in her age group she just showed up, said what people told her to, and expected success. When all she really did was piss off all the wrong people.

Rich Hoffman

Nobody Should Care About China’s Box Office: Reaching a market of over a billion people can’t justify surrendering to communism

What I have always loved about Star Wars, aside from the obvious creativity that it takes to make the movies, is that they are in and of themselves positive stories that don’t get hung up on negativity. Yet the theme of our day is negativity, because if people are in a state of discontent they may be open to the offerings of some political class. It was probably always this way to some extent, but its really bad now, where negativity is insisted upon by certain sectors of the world, as a culture. Yet, its not always easy to see, but when something like a new Star Wars film comes out, the pop culture reaction to it is an obvious measure that we can all see and touch. And it was never clearer as to what the intentions for our society is than in reporting on the new Star Wars film, which was probably the most positive film I’ve seen by anybody in a long time, and one that certainly stands for goodness. Clearly the intent of the characters in the movie were to make clear choices about good and bad behavior. So of course the focus on the reviews was that this latest movie, The Rise of Skywalker is that it is the most poorly reviewed film since The Phantom Menace, and that it has bombed in China at that box office, see the Variety article below:

https://variety.com/2019/film/news/star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker-flops-debut-china-1203449672/’

This is why I write so much about Star Wars, the movies are very positive and defined about what good and evil should be—as any kid’s fairy tale would. That makes them as a work of art a wonderful measure about social values and the motivations of our cultural forces. Further, I would offer that communism has been the functioning plan for many years, especially those college trained as all media people are to some extent, certainly in the case of writers of these types of articles like Patrick Frater a defense of China and its communism is baked into their view of the world, and by attacking films that are distinctly American points of view, China continues on with the mission they’ve had all along and is constantly assisted by universities and their products to advocate for and against certain types of cultures. The effort becomes grossly obvious when entertainment trades make it so obvious such as trying to slam a movie as successful as The Rise of Skywalker which made over $177 million domestically over its opening weekend and will continue to do well at the box office over the long Christmas week. Especially when the news around the world that in just a few days it made $376 million globally. That is hardly anything to sneeze at, or to ignore, culturally.

The problem is one that I have pointed out often, especially coming out of Hollywood for more than a couple decades now, where Chinese companies have been buying up interests in film studios and even trade magazines. They have been trying to do to American markets what they do internally in China as communists, and that is to control everything at every level. I mean give me a break, Star Wars was beat at the box office in China by Ip Man 4: The Finale, and that is very fishy. Instead of making the story about the Chinese box office being a failure of Star Wars to reach an audience, the story is really about how China as a government controls such box office numbers so that they can protest against western ideas influencing their country, especially when the protests in Hong Kong are fueled by those same western ideas. The box office numbers themselves do not tell the story, but our media which has been heavily influenced by the Chinese even from such a far reach uses the known measurements that China controls to attempt to shape the kind of stories that are told in our culture—which the rest of the world obviously loves as they were.

I admired Disney, which is a big global company that wants to please everyone, because they allowed the filmmakers of Star Wars to get back to what made the films popular with fans and The Rise of Skywalker is a love letter back to them full of very positive storylines that don’t get hung up on negativity. The previous installment The Last Jedi was taking a turn to the dark side in all aspects and critics loved it. But the fans didn’t. As I said at the start of this article, one way to control people is to take away from them hope, disconnect them from options so that they will be forced to embrace a way of life that the controller wishes to impose. When Star Wars looked to be taking a negative “realistic” tone with this modern trilogy, critics loved the film, but when the box office diminishing returns started showing that fans were leaving, Disney had to make some decisions and listen to the fans, and return to the kind of storytelling that Star Wars has always been for people—which is not the trend of the world full of communists in China that still have global plans.

I doubt that Patrick Frater from Variety is an open communist, but I would bet that he’s likely an anti-Trump political personality and that the whispers of his college days speak to him in copious amounts, and that the roots of those whispers were sympathetic to the type of society that China has been trying to export for decades. Star Wars obviously stands against that sentiment. While in the states, Variety has been very supportive of Star Wars so long as they could view the Resistance as being anti-Trump and liberal. However, the reality is that Star Wars has always been a small government love letter and few stories in the history of storytelling has ever shown how a government can be great one day, and on the next turn into a mass manufacturer of dystopia and scandal. The enemies of American ideas I would offer are those who have also been giving bad reviews to The Rise of Skywalker. While Disney has tried to make everyone happy, especially with the ridiculous lesbian kiss at the end of the movie as if to throw a bone to the dogs, ultimately there is no way to shut out the negativity that comes from the press because the goal is to attempt to keep people from being enchanted by the positive messages of Star Wars, since it is control over mankind that is at stake.

This movie is just one more example of why China is ultimately irrelevant. Nobody can make movies culturally that China and America will enjoy together. If a film studio tries to make movies that China will like, American audiences will push it away. And if the story is too “western” then China will shut it down in their markets. This is the nature of this entire battle yet I don’t see any evidence from the trades in dealing with the issue properly. That is because they are part of the problem and when they can, such as in this Variety article, they must take down any challenges to China as a communist culture. To save Star Wars, Disney had to choose, and they went with traditional western storytelling as they should. Nobody cares about China’s stupid contributions. Its worth dropping a $100 million at the box office, which is likely what it cost. But that money will be made up many times over in the other markets before its all said and done, and Disney will be rewarded for their choice, even if the trades like Variety are rooting against it for all the reasons stated.

Rich Hoffman

Lee Wong Supports Communist China: As a boot-licker he has proposed danger to our economy

Like I said previously, Lee Wong should not be running for the 4th District Senate seat in Ohio let alone polluting the streets of West Chester with his signs four months before the primary. But since he is, he’s more than open to criticism. I make no attempts to hide my support for George Lang for that same position. It’s not just because I’ve known him for a long time, but its due mainly to George knows how the game is played and he can play it without losing himself. Lee does not, he has no idea what he’s doing and it is reasons like his support of that ridiculous Chinese trade trip that he and Mayor of Cincinnati John Cranley went on under the umbrella of economic expansion with China that make me a George Lang fan in that race for the Senate of Ohio in the upcoming primary.

The game with China is one that all those representatives mentioned, especially the universities have missed the mark on. I doubt that they openly support the communist regime in China, but philosophically they are aligned at the hip and that makes all of them dangerous, domestically. Thank goodness President Trump understood the situation and he has played the leverage game against the Chinese very well, a trade deal with them will be signed very soon and our Dow Jones will shoot up to over 30,000 in the very near future. But to get there we couldn’t do as Lee Wong and his liberal partners wanted to do. I say liberal because Lee has listed himself as a Republican because he must in Butler County. If he were in Hamilton County with John Cranley, he’d be a registered Democrat, just for context. People who don’t understand business and the game of leverage believed even a year ago that because China has over a billion people in it, that they were all ripe for a new customer market. But, unfortunately, most of those billion people don’t have much money and all of them are tightly controlled by the communist government in China. So to get access to that market, American companies had to do a lot of boot-licking led by our inept politicians who were guilty of propping up the communist government with false power and appeasement.

Although the effort to reach out to China’s city of Jiaozhou as a sister city to Cincinnati with a trade agreement looks nice, its purely political and a not so disguised appeasement to the power of communism which with Lee’s often very vocal support of Chinese-American relationships, he is clearly not on the side of capitalist free market decision making. Whenever pressed on this topic the usual thing for Lee to do is cite his military service which he mistakenly believes is a trump card to any questioning of his patriotism. He even goes on the attack to suggest that he’s the only patriotic politician in the region because of his military service. But as we know, there are many circumstances where military people go bad and are less than patriotic, so Lee’s military service does not omit him from discussions about supporting communists. In short, if you support China in its current form, you are supporting communism. Until the Chinese overthrow their communist government and replace it with something better, they are a tyrannical regime that is a threat to the world. They are not our friends and they do not have leverage of our future—as Lee and many liberal economists would like you to believe. A good question for Lee in the upcoming debates would be for him to denounce China as a communist manipulator in the world markets, something that will reveal his true intentions and economic beliefs.

Fortunately, we are now looking at this issue in hindsight. I know George Lang stood with President Trump on the trade standoff that has been going on for a long time. The President is going to come out on top in that exchange. He of course understands the nature of economics and knew that China was a paper tiger looking important in theatrics only. Their population that is over 1 billion people are largely poor and unimaginative due to their communist rule, so they are not effective in marketplace competition, only when the rest of the world fears their population. Once that fear is removed, or any debt holdings they may have on assets to gain leverage in a negotiation, it becomes clear quickly what China is and has always been about, the ultimate spread of communism to the world and world domination by putting everyone in debt to the Chinese. It was always the plan and leftists in America know it, which is why nearly every university in North America have been kissing the ass of the communists for decades. It is what they wanted for America until Donald Trump came along and proved otherwise.

Trump called the Chinese bluff and once he did that, and he was very alone in doing so—China was exposed for what they were, looters who steal ideas and wealth from other countries by fluffing their feathers like peacocks to look bigger and badder than they really were. In the end, without America to loot off of, their economic leverage tanked in a big way and it forced them to the negotiating table with Trump and he knew it all along. He could wait them out, they couldn’t survive long without American imports and jobs to carry them along. That was the secret of the trade deal that’s coming. America had all the cards; China only had a massive population of potential consumers to dangle out there as a potential market expansion lure. But the truth in the end was that to gain market access our companies had to bend to the rules of communism, which Google, Nike, and the NBA were more than willing to do. And politicians like Lee Wong were there to pave the way for the embarrassments.

A basic rule in politics and in business that is true around the world, those who have the gold, rule. When negotiating with China, America had all the gold. China wanted some of it, so they are the ones who must bend in the negotiations. Not America. But if anybody had listened to all the dumb universities, John Cranley and Lee Wong, America would still be licking the boots of China. Lucky for us, Trump put an end to it, and I can say that there isn’t a more pro business Trump supporter in the Midwest than George Lang, the obvious best choice for the upcoming Ohio senate seat. Lee’s blind support of an obvious sentimental favorite of China leads to bad decisions and a very poor political philosophy. This is nothing new for those who know Lee best, the people who work with him. Having screwed up political beliefs doesn’t make a person bad. But it makes them dangerous in leadership positions and is just another reason why nobody should vote for Lee Wong, I would say for anything. Certainly not for Senate, but not for any public position. He uses the mask of being a Republican to stay in office, but his sentiments have and will always be with communist China.

Rich Hoffman

Another Way To Know Why Lee Wong is not a Republican: The cars we drive say everything about us

Another way that you can tell that Lee Wong, the West Chester trustee who is a clear Democrat pretending to be a Republican so he can get some votes in the 4th Senate District in Ohio, is by the car he drives. I didn’t know myself until I saw a video from a protestor confronting Lee while walking around his neighborhood. Under pressure from the protestor Lee went to his car as seen below and it was one of those ridiculous Fortwo cars that are considered “smart” cars and healthy for the environment. Those stupid little cars are nonsense and dangerous and should be illegal on our roads at only 70 HP with a 1.0L 3-cyl engine. No real Republican would be caught dead in one of those greenie weenie cars. The only people who have them are those who have allowed themselves to be caught up in the fiction of global warming, which is shorthand for the spread of communism around the world using environmental concerns as the change agent. You can’t be a pro capitalist Republican and drive one of these stupid cars—it’s just an un-American thing to do. Yet, I was not surprised knowing what I do about him to see that he was one of “those guys.”

Of course, whenever Lee gets pinned down with such statements his first thing to say is that he was in the military and that if you didn’t serve, then he is more of a patriot than you are for being in the armed services. So before going on about cars and what they say about the kind of person you are, let’s cover this little issue. I don’t begrudge anybody who serves in the military. I think it’s a great place to train tomorrow’s talent. I like having the best in the world, but I am not a yes sir, no sir kind of person. Its just not in me to follow orders from anybody. My life is far more valuable than the so-called “higher calling” they teach in the military, so I don’t feel a need to thank every veteran. Good for them for whatever duty they have done for God and country, but I view them as people far behind on their personal journeys. Anybody somewhat healthy can join the military and learn to follow orders. Learning to follow orders is not how you get the next great leaders, so in my mind, if that is not the objective, it’s a wasted effort, and the military isn’t about creating leaders, it creates people who learn to follow orders, which creates problems later in life when we have to teach veterans to think for themselves. So, I’m not a fan of veterans who promote themselves as the next political leaders managing our communities. I can see that even President Trump has had to learn this harsh reality, most of the big generals he brought into his administration have turned out to be Democrats, because by their nature, they are just other versions of government employees. My two favorite generals of all time were Claire Lee Chennault and Patton, and both of those guys were in trouble with the military all the time. I am far more rebellious than those guys, so Lee’s military service is just another blight on his record in my opinion. He didn’t lay down his life for me, he did what many do, he hid from responsibility by joining up to become just another government employee, which he never got over after all these years.

But we must talk about this stupid car, this little eco friendly piece of crap that should never be on a public road with much, much larger vehicles that Lee Wong drives. First of all he shows bad judgment in falling for the communist green movement dialogue that we should all do the responsible thing and surrender our desire for big SUVs and reduce our environmental footprint by driving smaller cars. Well, no, we shouldn’t. Rather we should drive the biggest and most powerful cars we can get our hands on because it says about us that we value our individualism in a capitalist culture and that our vehicles are extensions of ourselves in the grand scheme of things, which is why at any stop light in America that is double-laned in all directions, you’d be hard pressed to see any two cars lined up in the multitudes that are the same make and model—or even color. As American’s we like choice, and we like power and our cars reflect that. The greenie weenies who produced that ridiculous piece of crap, the Smart Fortwos were attacking the nature of American life by going as far to the opposite extreme as the SUV market was pushing for to make a political statement against American values. Pure and simple.

The car in an American market, which you don’t see elsewhere in the world, except a bit in Japan who have adopted our love of cars to some extent, is a statement and an extension of our homes. You don’t work hard in life to have a quarter million-dollar home and drive around a piece of crap–the car should be an extension of our life in general. If you are young, we understand you are working your way up in life, but your goal should be something bigger and better—always. You should never sacrifice your pleasures for the benefit of some climate change fiction made up by Democrats to control people through fear. You should get the best car you can get to go with the best house, the best clothes—the best of everything you can manage for yourself because that fuel drives capitalism and our American life that is the envy of the world. With Lee driving one of those stupid cars he’s announcing to the world that he is one of “those” anti-American forces working in the world to change the way we do things. And when he gets pressed on it he quickly retreats to his service in the armed forces as a defense. Yet obvious to me is that Lee is hiding behind his military service, to mask his tendency to follow the orders of whatever mass movement is happening at the time. In this case, its submission to the global warming communists. He is so enchanted with their message that he actually spent money on one of those stupid Smart Fortwo cars that could be toppled over easily with a strong wind.

What you drive says a lot about who you are in American cultures. Many people when they meet me wonder why I’m not driving around in a sports car, which I’d love to. Only I’m a big family person who often finds myself hauling around lots of people, so mini vans and SUVs are necessary for my life. I have a hot rod car in the garage waiting for a clear schedule and that keeps me appeased. But people just reading this blog site think I would have something more ostentatious, but reality has a way of sifting through an image to the heart of a person, and that usually ends up being the case. We drive our cars in my family for a long time, but we always buy them new, and as big as possible for the reasons described. People who make a choice to buy a smaller car, especially when they are older and have the means to do anything they want financially, are making a political statement contrary to the nature of American life, and that isn’t just villainous, its anti-Republican.

Rich Hoffman

A Review of ‘The Rise of Skywalker’: Star Wars is back and has a lot in common with the Trump impeachment

Sometimes things happen that are very good and you have an experience that was much better than you thought it would be and that was certainly the case of the latest Rise of Skywalker Star Wars film. I know a lot of my readers are perplexed as to why I write so much about Star Wars, and to understand why, I would point to this movie. It has a lot in common with the Donald Trump impeachment by the press, a desired narrative designed to shape a social argument. While the president represents in people a desire to push back against oppressive institutions—which is a continuous theme of all Star Wars movies and shows, the media itself has become one of those oppressive institutions where there trained minds within it find Star Wars ideas threatening, not just childish, but dangerous. So I read with interest hundreds and hundreds of reviews this week about the Rise of Skywalker while many of the same publications framed similar opinions about the presidency of Donald Trump. The common statement was that this new Star Wars film wasn’t very good, it didn’t take the needed chances, and lets face it, it steered away from the progressive politics of the last film, which caused a lot of trouble in the fan community. The Rise of Skywalker was a damn, good movie and a real love letter from the filmmakers to the fan base and it left me feeling very good about it and extremely hopeful for the future.

What Star Wars means to our society I cannot understate enough, the magic it has on our culture is invaluable. I think its very powerful, and important. As a kid’s movie it has the potential to set high goals in the minds of viewers, especially young ones and this Rise of Skywalker film understood that responsibility. These are not movies about reality, or progressive politics, plot points that film school losers studied were important, the Star Wars movies, all of them are about creativity and thinking beyond the scope of your present circumstances. They are also about overcoming impossible odds when faced with dire circumstances. In that fashion, there were parts of Rise of Skywalker that reminded me a lot of the original Wizard of Oz, particularly when the heroes of the story were trying to rescue Chewbacca from a First Order star destroyer. The themes were light on their feet and fun. Reality wasn’t the goal but the flow of optimism was and that made parts of this movie pure magic.

The reason the reviewers choose not to like movies like this and why they don’t like President Trump is that they wish to live their lives in a victimized status, to have something to blame for why they are losers in life. President Trump is about overcoming loser status, and so are Star Wars films at their heart. They are all about using creative tools and technology to help the viewers of the films unlock optimism in their lives hopefully well beyond the time that the lights come back up and the movie is over. The Rise of Skywalker was an optimistic love letter to the audience. Obviously, Lucasfilm has listened to the complaints of the previous films. And I will have to give credit to Bob Iger at Disney, he listened too. There was a lot going on in The Rise of Skywalker that was optimistic, ambitious and a real throwback to the Saturday morning serials that caused George Lucas to make these films so long ago. The opening credits complete with what was likely one of John Williams’ final musical scores was wonderful and set the stage the way these kinds of stories have for hundreds of years, and have been the key to why they are so beloved by so many generations of audiences.

Rather than give away the movie, I’d rather cover the spirit of the film and encourage everyone to go see the movie and reward Disney with a big box office score. I’d like to see this one break some records, because it deserves to. I keep hearing from critics that The Rise of Skywalker didn’t take any chances, the way people have become accustomed to in other theatrical releases, like a Tarantino film, or some movie that advances the political ideologies of the left where women rights are the dominate objectives. Let me tell you about risk, try taking a very private story telling film that Star Wars started out as in 1977 and hold its creative looseness intact as it transitions over to corporate media while still telling stories of individual input and sustenance as the pressures otherwise push down on the attempt. I never said it would be easy for Disney to make these movies, only that they should respect the fans that have stayed with the franchise for over 40 years of storytelling. There was a couple sitting next to me who were older than I was, probably by over ten years and they were sitting there at the end of the credits with me with tears streaming down their faces and a smile from ear to ear. I asked them if they liked the film and of course they were beyond words with approval.

I met similar people in line at Disney World just a week before The Rise of Skywalker was released. They like me had spent thousands and thousands of dollars to take a vacation to Disney World and ride the new Rise of the Resistance at Galaxy’s Edge at Hollywood Studios. There were little kids in the line that took over four hours to get through, and there were people who were likely in their 20s in 1977 when the first movie came out and they were happy to participate in this mythology that had grown all these decades into these modern miracles of ride technology. What’s risky is in serving those types of fans while continuing to growth the business needs and take care of the corporate expectations, and Disney certainly put their best foot forward with this one. It may have taken them most of the last decade to get there, but from what I saw, they have finally found their footing. The results of The Rise of Skywalker were obviously good.

The most notable improvement was the return of romance to Star Wars, which had been avoided due to the political upheavals of our modern world. All the main characters ended up with love interests by the end of the film which was very satisfying intellectually, because lets face it, that’s how people think about things. It is unnatural to have passionate stories told in the refrigerator of modern politically correct politics. Yet Disney listened to the fans and gave Fin his third girlfriend of the series. I don’t want to make too much of it, only to note that the writers of the film obviously understood why the previous Star Wars films were missing the mark with fans, and this movie set out to correct that situation rather boldly. Hurray for good ol’ fashioned filmmaking and a turn for Hollywood to correct its course with this obvious attempt to appease the fans. Not the critics, but the people who actually buy a ticket, pay for their popcorns with a king’s ransom, and just want to think about something bigger than everyday life, instead of the restrictions of the unimaginative. Hurray for us all, Star Wars is back!

Rich Hoffman

REVENGE: Before we talk about violance against Democrats, let’s vote

It took me a while to cool down enough to even talk about the congressional impeachment vote they held on December 18th, a few decades to the exact day that Bill Clinton was impeached. The date and precise timing of the effort was obvious revenge for that vote which was then held by Republicans, only for a much more justified reason. Bill Clinton had actually perjured himself and broke the law. For this one against Trump, and all those of us who voted for him, this impeachment vote was a shit shot in the dark for a losing party on their heels falling out of bounds. Sure, sometimes the ball does go in the basket, only these idiots weren’t even on the right basketball court where the game was being played, so their shot had no chance of scoring any points. It was in all aspects a resolution to a prediction I had made many years ago on WAAM radio in Ann Arbor, Michigan where I predicted the end of the Democrat Party as we knew it. Well, this was the end for them, and for that, perspective took some time to come to.

To be fair I watched the debates prior to the impeachment vote just as I did two decades ago for the Clinton hearing, and for the truth of it, the intellect of the Democrats has dropped considerably. They were always bad, Dick Gephardt was never a vestige of intellect. Back then they did a much better job of hiding their socialism for which is at the heart of all their party philosophy. But at least there was an assumption of law and order, and of fairness. We all had much higher expectations of congresspeople and senators at that time. Well, not anymore. The people talking for the Trump impeachment were lost, mindless, blind ideologues of a failed philosophy who really didn’t know what to do next. Impeaching the president was a political move meant to put a black mark on his resume prior to the next election hoping that it would cost him voters. Their short-sighted virtue meant that they had lowered the bar on impeachment to anything. When another Obama type was president in the future, this case provided a means of swift removal the next time Republicans held the House and Senate as they did in 2012 and could have ripped Barack Obama from the White House rather easily for the scandals that were obvious, not to mention the ones that weren’t.

Then more reality came into a clearer focus for me. I had recently vacationed in Disney World and stepped out of my daily grind to see how normal people live, who don’t pay so much attention to politics like you and I do dear reader. As I watched those idiots talk it was clear that they didn’t know that the latest episode of The Mandalorian was released on Disney+ and that a new Star Wars film was being released this week and that pop culture was entirely focused on these events. Nobody cared about impeachment of the president. All they cared about was whether they had money in their wallets and enough credit to buy a new car. Congress had lost its credibility a long time ago with most people and Trump understood that as he took the stage in Michigan to an overflow crowd in Battlecreek to berate the attempts made against him.

And on cue, the same losers who thought the new Star Wars film didn’t have enough lesbian sex in it, or progressive political stances, because Disney did listen and wanted to fix things with the fans, so they rated the film poorly hoping to hurt its financial success, they had up the impeachment articles hoping to shape the narrative against Trump, as they had planned with the Democrat Party for years. Only Baby Yoda was still trending higher than impeachment perplexing those on the left who for the life of them couldn’t understand why. The Democrats and their supporters were just out of ideas and the world has moved on without them, and for all the reasons that they feel they have to cheat to win elections, such as tampering with the 2020 one to even have a shot with this impeachment attempt, they are completely disconnected as to what people want in a president or their elected representatives. Most people have already moved on from them and don’t pay them any attention, at all. I think that is dangerous for a republic, but it’s a grim reality.

My first thoughts during the impeachment vote was to inflict violence against them and overtake our government back into reasonable hands. It wouldn’t take much for a person like me to organize and I spent much of the 18th thinking in just such a fashion, until it became obvious that these idiots didn’t have the slightest clue as to what they were doing. They were pretentious and disconnected from reality, and in the long game, that was a good thing. Their vote essentially sealed their own fate as a party, because for those who did care, and were watching and not thinking about the latest iTunes download from Tayler Swift, the next election would be hell for them because the Democrats had just pissed off all the people who still do care, and they were failing to bring people over into their cause. There were fewer stars from Hollywood willing to make political stands in 2020 than there were even in 2016 and this impeachment effort wasn’t rallying people toward their side, it was pushing them away.

Most people only have time for so much in their lives, and people these days don’t have time or energy for this impeachment attempt by loser Democrats who they can see can’t compete with Donald Trump in the upcoming election. The writing is quite clear on the wall, and apparently everyone can see it but the Democrats who are still stuck on the impeachment revenge of December 18th, 1998 of Clinton, their knight in shining armor. And if they have been upset about that very justified event, what do they think is going to happen over the next 30 years after this Trump attempt? Do they think we’ll just all go to sleep and forget about it? Hell no, people like me will want to paint our homes in their blood for many years to come, they will never get off the hook and that is something they seem to never have considered. Perhaps they are just too stupid to think about it, but whatever it is, they have stamped themselves to it forever, and to their own detriment.

So I would offer that the best revenge is to activate the votes for all Republicans in the next election and to show up in droves to put them in office and knock out the Democrats from every position up and down the line. It is better to take them out of office than to think about putting bullets in their heads with a bloody rebellion. Why get all dirty when all you have to do is show up and vote? Now if we find out that the Democrats find a way to massively tamper with the elections, which I wouldn’t put it past them to try, then we can talk about violence. But for now, we have all the cards to play with and they have nothing. The best thing is to beat them in elections, which at this point should be easy. Then lets talk about the future.

Rich Hoffman

How to Improve Oga’s Cantina at Galaxy’s Edge: Where creativity and a vastly expanding mythology can improve life dramatically

Obviously, my recent trip to Disney World had a positive impact on me, and I thought it would. It had been decades since I was really able to take a trip like that and just enjoy it without a whole lot of tag along projects. I could write a lot about all the positive experiences I had the week I was in Orlando at Disney World visiting all the parks and Disney Springs in general. But specifically I observed in the context of creativity some jaw dropping elements put forth by the new Star Wars land they call Galaxy’s Edge and I had a kind of moment after it all soaked in where I was in the Oga’s Cantina, a kind of recreation of the popular spaceport bar that was seen in the very first Star Wars movie way back in 1977, and I was awe struck. It was 2019, I was 51 years old and remember seeing that place for the first time in the movie and buying the album of the soundtrack and listening to the music over and over again on a record player. That popular cantina song was the gateway for my generation to science fiction and adventure, and here was the real thing, and they were selling drinks to an adult audience with barely standing room only around the bar. I included a few video clips of my point of view from the cantina that night here for reference, but it was really quite ostentatious that I could leave where I was having a couple of drinks with my wife and go outside to see the Millennium Falcon sitting there in a setting that belonged in a movie of the most fantastic type. It was quite an achievement to build, let alone experience and I couldn’t help but feel that something very important was happening to our human species.

Imagination had stepped over a kind of intellectual barrier and a new reality had been created born from a new kind of thinking driven by myth. Before visiting the cantina that night I had purchased from the marketplace just around the corner a much-desired deck of Sabacc cards which I had been waiting for really all of my life. After hundreds of books that I had read on that popular intergalactic poker game, finally Disney’s Galaxy’s Edge had invented a real game with real cards that could only be bought at that location and I was having quite a time with them. It was all a bit overwhelming and I had a lot of thoughts about what should come next to such an experience. Since a new reality has been born there at Galaxy’s Edge, and from the looks of the crowd, that cantina wasn’t big enough, nor would it be in the future I am offering my thoughts to help the story advance based on my observations. Granted, I never thought such a place would have ever been possible. But since it is, we should talk about improvements.

I’m not much of a drinker, so going to the cantina at Galaxy’s Edge was more out of curiosity than anything else. I’m not into the drinking songs and other things that go on in bars. But I do think the cantina should be more of a social destination, a place to meet people, get away from the heat of the day, and to freshen up. Since that cantina has the reservations booked for the whole day before you can even enter the park, its not a relaxing place to go. It’s certainly cool, but not relaxing. If I were program managing Galaxy’s Edge, I would offer some free advice to them–they need to build several more cantinas around the complex. The one they have isn’t enough. They need at least two more, and both of those need to be larger. They can be in the designs of other locations in the movies, but it is very obvious that Star Wars fans going to Galaxy’s Edge want to hang out and talk to other fans without a time limit, so more cantina space is required.

Also, the cantina management need to give happy hour prices to fans who cosplay, so that there are more people in the cantina who look like people from all over the Star Wars galaxy. Many people would willingly dress up in creature costumes if they could get significant costs knocked off their drinks and that would solve the environment problem of having the place full of non-Star Wars looking tourists. I would be surprised to learn that this wasn’t already happening, but I must suggest it because it’s the most logical thing to consider. That was really the only thing missing is the atmosphere full of strange creatures. Everything else looked great.

Additionally, as I had my drinks watching the crowds feeling like the best thing to do would be to have a good Sabacc game at the bar or in one of the booths. The booths around the outside parameter were full of families so such a game wouldn’t be possible. The cantina staff wanted quick turnover inside to make room for the lines of people outside, so playing Sabacc in the cantina just wasn’t an option and it should be. In fact, Disney I think has done such a good job marketing their new Sabacc game, that I think in a year or so there will be so many people playing it that they should host Sabacc tournaments at Galaxy’s Edge the way that poker tournaments are held in Vegas. I would go, I love the game. In a lot of ways I think it is much better than poker or black jack and it is otherworldly enough to allow participants to embroil themselves into the Star Wars mythology. Fantasy Flight Games has had great success with their X-Wing games and other Star Wars games. This Sabacc game would be the perfect meeting game in Galaxy’s Edge for years to come and would really enhance the cantina feel that you should experience when you enter those types of places. That would make the cantina more of a function than just a novelty act.

Going even further, I would think a cantina like Oga’s, except much, much, larger should be build at Disney Springs and it is there that yearly Sabacc championships should be played from players all over the country. The stakes could be simple, a week vacation package for four to the parks and hotels, that way it wouldn’t be gambling where money is exchanged, but still the prize would be in the tens of thousands and worth practicing all year to have a chance to win. And the tournaments could be broadcast on Disney+ the way poker games are broadcast on cable networks currently. I’ve been playing the game since I picked it up that day and it would be very good for television, and for cantina events.

All things come from imagination, even the games of our past like poker. When film and literature create in the imaginations of people the kind of demand I saw at Oga’s Cantina in Galaxy’s Edge at Hollywood Studios, we are on the frontier of some new kind of thinking, and that is very exciting. I can see future engineers for space stations on Mars and beyond playing Sabacc to pass the time on those long space voyages that they started learning to play at Galaxy’s Edge in one of these cantinas. Its more appropriate for the future than the games of the past, and that is something that is astonishing to see, how intellect is inspiring creations not born of rigid societies, but of creativity and vastly expanding mythology.

Rich Hoffman

Anger and Revenge: Democrats impeachment vote is a shot at us all

The only thing that comes to my mind regarding the current congress of Democrats voting to impeach President Trump is anger and a necessity for revenge. When I think back to when Republicans had both the House and Senate and could have impeached President Obama on many more accounts, now that this ridiculous standard against Trump has been set, it is clear that we should have. We could have impeached Obama over Benghazi, Fast and Furious, the IRS scandal, the off the mic promises to the Russians that he’d give them more support after the election, we could have thrown Obama out of office before the end of his first term.

Instead of calling for violence against our government for participating in this coup, I’m going to think about more pleasant things for a few days while I cool down. Its not enough to call this impeachment vote a joke, because at the heart of it is aggression against everyone who voted for Trump, and that isn’t OK.

Rich Hoffman

Democrats Aren’t Very Smart: McConnell is doing the right thing

Let me explain something to all Democrats, the same thing I have been saying to family and associates at all these Holiday events, congresspeople should consider themselves lucky that Mitch McConnell is working with the White House on this impeachment trial in the senate. As I’ve said on many occasions, I do not hate Democrats. But I do look at them as undeveloped people who require more learning in the ways of life. We are not all equal, some of us work harder than others, some of us are smarter than others, and some of us care a whole hell of a lot more than others. Democrats are far behind on the evolutionary instruction that it takes to be a complete person. They do not have a right to destroy our republic just because they cannot create a viable candidate to run for the office of president—which is all this congressional impeachment attempt has been. Democrats are lucky that they aren’t being beaten in the streets with a war, rather just having McConnell state that the impeachment is going nowhere in the senate. Because if that wasn’t the case, then violence against participating Democrats is the next step, and they don’t want that.

People do not have a right to ruin your life, and that is what Democrats are attempting to do by removing President Trump. The Dow Jones this past week closed at over 28,000 and has the potential of going into the mid-30s once Trump is re-elected in 2020. I’ve spelled it out in these articles that I have done over the last decade. I was the one who said what would happen to our economy if we just took away all the ridiculous, self-imposed regulatory burdens that were stifling our way of life. There was a very interesting article in the Wall Street Journal on December 14th titled, “Economists Got the Decade All Wrong. They’re Trying to Figure Out Why.” Well, I explained it with hundreds of articles on the matter. Everyone was predicting a recession; this is the first one we’ve had in America where a recession did not happen. Well, its due to Trump unleashing the market. That alone makes him one of the greatest presidents that we’ve ever had. And really, we could point to many hundreds of real accomplishments as to why he should be re-elected. Who cares what party he’s from? Democrats have benefited from the Trump presidency as much as anybody, yet they can’t admit it because they are just too stupid for their own good.

The Trump economy is great because he didn’t follow the advice of all the micro managers who cause economic downturns. Trump ignored the cycles and concentrated on positive pro-growth influences and the results are unmistakable, and far from an accident. Since the Trump election, consumer confidence in the markets has exploded and have continued in spite of all the attempts at bad news by the Democrats over the last three years. We should all be angry at the attempted coup by the FBI—ran by Democrats. We should deeply resent this impeachment attempt, since the FBI coup failed. And we should hate the attempts to sabotage the markets with so much negativity and second guessing that went on with the Chinese trade dispute. In spite of everything we still have a strong economy with the potential of much, much better days ahead. So why should we care about Democrats and their desire to impeach Trump because as a party they are trying to attack our way of life? Its insane to think we should care.

I’m not one who thinks everyone deserves a seat at the table out of fairness if the other participants haven’t worked very hard to understand how life works. Even that the Wall Street Journal would consider exploring why the economy did not behave the way they predicted should say everything about why Democrats are not prepared for this election, because they don’t understand market forces and how the psychology of human behavior works the way it does. I sympathize that not everyone thinks about these things as much as I do for instance. When I talk to people, especially at these holiday settings, I am shocked by how much people like to drink and to forget, as opposed to stimulate their intellects so that they can make better decisions. I don’t talk to people much because its often a hindrance to furtherance, so I just let everyone else gabble on sipping on their stupid alcoholic drinks and rolling in the mud of their own ignorance trying to sound smart when the only way they can do so is to get everyone drunk around them to create the illusion. If that’s what they want to do, have at it, but don’t expect the rest of the world to cater to your weaknesses. That is precisely what Democrats expect out of this impeachment trial and once McConnell signaled that he wasn’t going to play along, the wind went out of their sails quickly, as it should have.

Republicans and Democrats are not equal sides of some American philosophy, Democrats are typically stupid people not very intellectually curious about the ways of the world. It doesn’t say much that most educators are Democrats, because they have simply attempted to dumb down the system to match their scope. But they aren’t very smart, they don’t know much about history, they aren’t very smart on understanding markets, they don’t know much about business, or even international philosophy of intertwining cultures. If they did know more, they would likely end up being Republicans. I would say that Trump used to be a Democrat and the more he learned about life, the more he became a Republican. I’ve said often that Ronald Reagan once thought about communist ideas and was a supporter of socialism when he was a young actor. As he grew up he became more of a conservative and eventually became a great Republican. The difference between the two, is not that they are equals, but rather evolutionary states of being. Democrats are lazy thinkers and that’s why they are stupid. They may be nice people who shop at the GAP and spend money going out to dinner, but they are not great characters of intellect who have any answers, let alone equal points of view.

And that’s what’s at stake with this impeachment, it’s the stupid people versus the smart people. Smart people generally aren’t born that way, they work to be in that state. Stupid people decide to be stupid because they are either too lazy to do the work, or they are just not courageous enough to step out of the crowd to establish themselves as people of intellect when the tides stand against it. That in itself doesn’t make them bad people, just people who are not far enough along their evolutionary tract to qualify to make decisions within a republic for which we all stand. Being a Republican is an evolutionary path more than just a side of the pyramid for which everyone has their own point of view that must be compromised. McConnell and the rest of the Republicans have an obligation to stand with Trump, and that lesson is what Democrats are going to have to face and they should consider themselves lucky. They could experience great violence, and if we had a less civil republic, they likely wouldn’t be walking around in a healthy condition.

Rich Hoffman

The Best Rides at Disney World: Enjoying the technical marvels of boundless imagination

I suppose I enjoy writing about anything, but rarely I get to write about something as enjoyable as the topic of today. Sure, even with all the concerns that there are in the world, it is nice to take a moment to have a little fun, and that’s what I did for myself for Christmas this year. I’m a fan of Star Wars, and very specifically the Millennium Falcon and it just so happens that they opened recently the new ride Smuggler’s Run at Disney World. So, I planned a trip to ride it giving myself no cost restrictions due to the unique nature of this particular vacation. I timed my visit to enjoy another Star Wars ride that just opened called Rise of the Resistance which appears to be the most technical ride ever created anywhere in the world to date. The result was an extremely enjoyable five amusement park journey over a 5-day period and over 40 miles of walking that exposed me to some really wonderful moments of pop culture development and technical mastery through wild imaginations. The story I tell here is one that would have helped me while planning this trip so I offer it to those who are in such a need, so that they can enjoy their vacations as much, or more than I did.

I wasn’t going to spend that much money and time dedication to a vacation and not see the most technical ride ever made that was themed to Star Wars so seeing Rise of the Resistance for me was paramount. The ride opened on December 5th and I targeted my visit for five days later once some of the technical kinks and consumer drop off had occurred. I hoped that the Star Wars franchise had been damaged to the point where I might actually be able to get on the ride in the middle of a work week at Disney World on a winter day between Holidays. But, the demand for this ride from the public was so intense that the ride was selling out just minutes after the park was opening each day, so approaching my dates at the parks, I was getting a little worried. I wasn’t sure if the ride would even stay running long enough to allow the visitors who wanted to ride the thing time to actually ride it. So there was a lot that could have kept me from riding it which made getting the opportunity a unique adventure in perseverance.

While my wife and I were traveling to Orlando Disney had created a boarding party policy to help alleviate all the intense traffic that wanted to ride the ride each day, something they were calling a virtual line. In their other very cool and technical ride that has now been open for over a year, the Avatar attraction called Flight of Passage, the average wait times are in the 190-minute range. Disney knew that for Rise of the Resistance that the times would be even greater, so they used this virtual line concept to get people access to the rides. That meant that you had to get to the park early and get in line to get a boarding pass designation that would then give you a kind of time slot to ride the ride. This is where things got tricky, the boarding passes couldn’t be booked but by a phone app, once you entered the park. There was a lot of digital interactions that I was very weary of, because I felt a lot of things could have gone wrong, and often do in other places. But the level of Disney competence turned out to be extraordinary and it all worked out in the end with hindsight. But it was very stressful if you were dead set in riding this new attraction—which I was. People were lining up to get their place in line essentially at 4 AM. The gates to Hollywood Studios, which is the Disney park that holds the new Star Wars rides didn’t post openings until 8 AM, yet unofficially the gates were being opened at 6:30 AM and within a few moments of that early time, all the boarding passes for the entire day were being given out. I knew we had to get to the park early—really early, and that we’d have to fight our way to get a boarding pass from a restless crowd.

What made things even worse, was that the ride was breaking down a lot and the park wasn’t getting through all their boarding passes issued in a day so even if you managed to get a boarding pass, you still might not get to ride. So to ensure that we’d get a boarding pass we arrived at the park at 3:50 in the morning and were the seventh car in line waiting for the parking lot to open. And sure enough, more people started arriving in droves. Security let everyone enter the parking lot without paying since they didn’t have any workers at the park yet to run the admittance booth. By 4 AM a massive line had formed at the security check in that lasted until it was thousands of people. At around 5:30 AM they ran everyone through security so that a new line could form at the front gate of Hollywood Studios. It was there where the real race would be on. You had to zap your way into the park before they’d allow you to join a boarding party for Rise of the Resistance and all those people would be doing the same thing at essentially the same time. Boarding parties could change, you might be one of the first people in the park, but if you had trouble with your phone, or the system crashed, a ten-minute delay could put you from 20 to 50 quickly. Anything under 50 had a good shot of riding that day, anything over was sketchy. The Rise of the Resistance looked to do about 100 boarding parties per day, so there weren’t infinite rides to accommodate all the people who were there. So we were stressed about getting that boarding pass even though we were at the front of the lines in all the phases. Still, lots of things could have gone wrong.

At 6:30 AM, they let us in, my wife and I zapped our Magic Bands at the station and in we were. Within seconds we had the app opened and much to my relief, we were boarding party 13, which meant we were sure to get a ride that day. And as it turned out, we’d have the chance to get on the ride in about a half hour. By 7:30 AM we were off the ride and in line to ride the great Smuggler’s Run. By 9 AM we had explored most of what we wanted to see at the new Galaxy’s Edge and were free to use our Park Hopper option to explore the other parks and the best of their best attractions. It was good that Disney had opened their park so early to take away the pressure of the day and to give themselves more time to give everyone they could rides on Rise of the Resistance. Without knowing but hoping that they’d do the same kind of thing at Animal Kingdom for the new Avatar ride, we showed up at 8 AM for the 9 AM open and were delighted that Disney opened the park there early as well, at 8:30 AM. Since we were one of the first in line we headed to Flight of Passage and were able to get on the ride before 9 AM.

In the end after riding everything, which was spectacular, the Smuggler’s Run turned out to be my favorite ride at Disney. My wife and I rode a lot of rides on our vacation, but we ended up riding Smuggler’s Run 8 times and each time I found myself enjoying it more and more. It wasn’t just because I’m sentimental toward the Millennium Falcon, but because the ride is a technical marvel to me that was a lot of fun to fly. I was equally impressed by Flight of Passage and Rise of the Resistance, but the flamboyant nature of Smuggler’s Run won the day for me. It turned out to be a couple of the most enjoyable days of my life.

Disney was brilliant in their marketing strategy. They liked that Rise of the Resistance was overselling and that they had to show sell-outs which only increased the desire for demand. People not willing to get up as early as I did weren’t going to get a ticket, and that made it the hottest ticket in the country for something that turned out to be more Broadway play than amusement park attraction. All these rides were more than just rides, they were theatrical experiences in many ways and were deeply impressive. Disney turned out to be very flexible on their openings so that they could build up ride experiences by thinking out of the box and I was very impressed with them. They not only built some of the greatest rides in the history of the world released all within a short time of each other, but they knew how to build the anticipation. Getting on Rise of the Resistance was more treasure hunt than just slugging through a line, and that made it that much more special. And that turned out to be the secret to getting on the rides at Disney World that people wanted to see so much. If you were willing to get there early, they’d find a way. They get the long lines to market, you get to experience something very cool, and that did make it a truly magical experience.

Rich Hoffman