Tag: philosophy

Liberty Township’s Rodizio Grill: The perfect place for a business meeting–be sure to see Captain Hook

imageCaptain Hook isn’t just a pirate from the famous Peter Pan stories; he’s also the head chef at the Rodizio Grill at the new Liberty Center. On a VIP night he came to my table with his curled up mustache and eager attentiveness to inquire about the assessment of his food by my wife and me. It was a packed house and the girders of political and economic support behind West Chester and Liberty Township were there as the restaurant owners smartly wanted the buy-in of the community’s leaders before opening to the public. After two soft openings just ahead of their grand opening—a VIP dinning experience where everyone in the new restaurant was on a full court press to impress put their best foot forward and they were eager for some input.   So what did I tell Captain Hook, I’ll save that for the end? First you’ll want to know what Rodizio is, why it’s unique, and why having it cuddled away inside a very intimate part of Liberty Center is excessively important to the continued economic development of the region.image

Rodízio (pronounced [ʁoˈdʒiziu] in Brazil) is an all-you-can-eat style of restaurant service in Brazilian restaurants. In most areas of the world outside of Brazil, a rodízio restaurant refers to a Brazilian style steakhouse restaurant. Customers pay a fixed price (preço fixo) and the waiters bring samples of food to each customer at several times throughout the meal, until the customers signal that they have had enough. In churrascarias or the traditional Brazilian-style steakhouse restaurants, servers come to the table with knives and a skewer, on which are speared various kinds of quality cuts of meat, most commonly local cuts of beef, pork, chicken and sometimes exotic meats. While not as popular, there are other rodízio style restaurants in Brazil, such as ones serving pasta or pizza, where various pizzas and pastas are brought on trays. Rodízio style sushi restaurants are also common in Brazil.

Most rodízio courses are served right off the cooking spit, and are sliced or plated right at the table. Sometimes they are accompanied with fried potatoes, fried bananas, collard greens, black beans, and rice (served buffet style).

In many restaurants, the diner is provided with a colored card, red on one side and green on the other. Accordingly, the servers will only bring more meat if the card is flipped to the green side.

Rodizio Grill, The Brazilian Steakhouse, offers over a dozen rotisserie grilled meats, perfectly seasoned and carved tableside by Rodizio Gauchos. The grilling process is traditional to the Southern part of Brazil, specifically in Sao Paulo. The Rodizio Gaucho, in dress and our carving method, is what you would find if you were dining in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

As a result of the slow roasting and seasoning process, the rotisserie grilled meats melt in your mouth, satisfying even the most discriminating taste buds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod%C3%ADzio

http://www.rodiziogrill.com/menu/

It was a pouring rain at the end of Gibson which migrates into a roundabout in front of Dillards, Pies and Pints and the entrance to the indoor portion of the Mall called The Foundry. We didn’t care if we were getting wet in a late October rain as leaves fell off the trees and littered the pavement. Liberty Center is an adult playground and my wife and I had been playing hard. She had just found a nice outfit at American Eagle and was very happy about it, so we entered the Rodizio Grill to a welcome best foot forward effort that was admirable. Of course the hostesses were friendly and all the managers were there to greet us. They were working hard to make a great first impression and they were successful. But as they took us to our seat my assessment was that the true test of the place would come many months later after the hype had died down—if they still exhibited the same energy. A VIP night is one thing—having the same passion every other day is quite something else. So I was skeptical as we took our seat and said hello to half a dozen other people also invited to the event that we knew.

For around $33 per person you get the all you can eat deal which is what Rodizio is all about. Our waitress explained it to us so we were excited to begin at the gigantic salad bar located toward the back of the room in the middle of the action, just ahead of the kitchen. At the window behind the bar were a small army of Gauchos getting fresh meat off the grill to hit the dinning room. My wife and I filled our plate and headed back to our table impressed with the massive selection of options that had so far been presented.

At Rodizio they put a block that looks like an hourglass, green on one side and red on the other at the end of your table. When you are ready for the Gauchos you flip it over so that the green side is up. When you want them to stop coming to your table you flip it to red. When you are done for the evening, you put it down on the table on its side. Very simple, yet there is a feeling of excitement in flipping it over to green because it’s like turning on a faucet. You really don’t know what’s going to happen, what meat the Gauchos will present first or who will bring it. We had five Gauchos assigned to our table, so there was a bit of randomness about the dinning experience that was certainly exciting. With a bit of a laugh we turned the block over and the Gauchos launched as if poised like snakes from the corners of the room and rushed to our side.

The Gauchos cut off various cuts of steak, chicken, pork, fish and even glazed pineapple which was amazingly delicious—much more so than I would have expected. It was all very exotic and obviously prepared with a lot of meticulous care. There were even cuts of glazed ham prepared in the same way as the pineapple—it was a carnivores dream. That was the first thought I had about the place, eating all that meat of different types invoked in me my inner T-Rex which is a nick-name that a lot of people who don’t like me often use to describe my temper. Sometimes during business you want to invoke that T-Rex and some red meat is good for bringing that kind of attitude to a deal you’re working on. That was the first thought I had about having power lunches at Rodizio, is that it puts you in that carnivore mood—which is good when that kind of mindset is needed. The endless supply of the meat is another aspect of that carnivorous rapture. If I had that much steak at a place like Jags in West Chester it would have cost $500 dollars. If you like to eat steak, and good steak at that, it’s hard to go wrong at Rodizio. When you are trying to close a deal or accomplish some difficult business endeavor, I can easily see a need to have lunch at Rodizio either with the people you are working with, or by yourself just to put your mind in the right condition. A little trick I use when I’m under pressure is I purposely eat red meat on the rare side, and Rodizio had several skewers of meat cooked just that way. It was delicious and invoked in me that T-Rex spirit that is often very helpful under pressure.

That’s when I had the next thought about Rodizio–it was essentially the perfect place to have a power meeting with clients. Often when dining with potential business partners, adversaries in business, or associates there are awkward pauses that are persistent with people who have little in common with each other but the project they are working on. For instance, I hate those meetings because I hate small talk. I love to go on and on about giant heady subjects with great enthusiasm, but not everyone is like that so I often have to turn off the afterburners to the point where I get really bored with the people I’m eating with. Not good when you’re trying to do some team building. Usually at these types of meetings you conduct small talk before you order drinks, usually it’s about sports. Then you order some appetizers and continue talking about sports. Then you order the entrees and are about done talking about sports because people usually have different teams that they like and you’ve exhausted all the topics that are safe without making them mad by that point. At Rodizio they have a natural solution to that problem. When you turn the block to green, the Gauchos flood your table side forcing the interaction of all your clients. Customers have to help pull the meat away as the Gauchos cut it, not in an awkward way, but one that is engaging and those awkward moments of silence with clients is filled with activity—constantly. If you want to talk about a serious subject to close a deal or make a point, turn the block to red, throw your issue on the table, then turn it to green again to get the action moving again while they simmer on your proposal. Rodizio has the ability to be a very powerful alley in the world of business, and I hope that area sales reps use it fully. Rodizio is your friend, trust me!

I watched Captain Hook, which was the actual nametag he was wearing, carefully tend to all the cooks in the kitchen and inspect the Gauchos as they worked the room. He paced around the salad bar making sure that everything was just perfect, and it was. So when he asked me what I thought about his food I told him that if he put the kind of love and care into the food that he had on this VIP night, he’d have a hit that this area would spectacularly support. Getting food of that quality in those quantities coupled with the ambitious service is an experience people will pay a lot of money for. Hook clearly had by natural inclination an understanding of the Metaphysics of Quality making me very excited about the dining experience at Rodizio not just for the VIP meal, but the future of Liberty Township. Clearly the appeal is a primal one cultivated into refinement. What’s not to like about endless supplies of meat cooked over an open fire? It’s good for romance, its good for business, its good for a mind in need of a primal charge. And Captain Hook was there to make sure everything stayed on the upside of quality. A good chef is the key to a restaurant, and the Rodizio at Liberty Center had one, and his name was Captain Hook. When you go, make sure to tell him what you think, because he cares.

The cost of the meal for two was around $100, which wasn’t bad for a quality experience. It’s about $66 for the meal, another $30 for drinks. Then there is the tip and the deserts which were so good I would think seriously about going there just for a drink at the bar and some desert even with Graters right around the corner. Their deserts were on the upside of good in comparisons to other deserts around the city of Cincinnati.   I’d put them on par with the best so they are worth the expense if you can muster the room in your stomach—which at the point where you put the block on its side to call it quits, there won’t be much room for more food. If you take your time to eat, likely you might manage some desert which is advisable. But don’t try to cram a trip to the Rodizio before a movie. Make sure to make the dinner at Rodizio the feature attraction of your day, because that’s what it deserves. Go after the movie. It takes time to appreciate the food, and to give your body time to enjoy it all. I happen to know that the tickets at the new theater are very reasonably priced for the luxury setting, so a night at the movies and dinner at the Rodizio will stay under a few hundred dollars—which is perfectly reasonable for a destination environment that might only be experienced on an out-of-town vacation. Of course the Cobb Theater at the other end of Liberty Center has their own fine dining options, which is why their ticket prices are so reasonable. But be sure to plan a trip to Rodizio often, not just a few times a year. I saw nothing but positives—a lot of ambition, a great product, a psychologically primal supplement and a bargain even at an above tier restaurant experience—which is what is expected at Liberty Center. I was invited to the VIP event to say nice things about the place, but it’s not hard to find enthusiasm for it. All I had to do is look at Captain Hook and witness how the rest of the staff fed off him—and it was obvious that Liberty Township had yet another fine treasure—not from a pirate, but a hell of a good chef. I will go back many times, but the most effective visit will be those business oriented dinners—because Rodizio has a setup that will make some of the most unpleasant meetings team building exercises constructed around the primal need for meat and the satisfaction of it cooked over an open fire while surrounded by luxury.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

How the DOJ and Lois Lerner Demanded the need for more Guns: Government pleads stupidity as a defense

Let’s see if we can get this straight, the Department of Justice has used a legal criterion of incompetence to justify not prosecuting Lois Lerner as she abused her power at the IRS for political reasons. DOJ officials reported that “substantial evidence of mismanagement, poor judgment and institutional inertia leading to the belief by many tax-exempt applicants that the IRS targeted them based on their political viewpoints. But poor management is not a crime,” thus establishing forever by attorneys everywhere that government can act against private citizens so long as they can prove they were too incompetent to manage a situation. So in essence, the DOJ has given all government employees a future way out of any abuse of power situation—all anyone has to do is plead stupidity to be relieved of whatever crime they may have committed.

Well, isn’t that interesting. That means hypothetically that if the President of the United States is given intelligence data suggesting that someone like me is a threat to national security and they send a squad of people to apprehend me—hypothetically speaking of course—but they go to the wrong house and bump into one of my neighbors who then opens fire and a firefight ensues similar to something like what happened at Waco, Ruby Ridge and other places—and a lot of people are killed–that those guilty of the whole thing would be let off the hook at the DOJ because bad management is not illegal.

Or suppose that a Secretary of State sets up a private server that she runs all her top-secret email through so she can scrub the information later for deniability—but then gets caught—that all she has to do is plead stupidity and all will be forgiven. They will even get the opportunity to run for president—wait, that’s actually happening right now with Hillary Clinton. That is not a hypothetical, but you get the point.

The DOJ has just provided the primary reason that government is too large and needs to be scaled back. They have just established why Washington D.C. should not be one of the highest per capita employment regions in the country—because they are too incompetent as a collective group to occupy so much wealth. Through their labor unions there are no expectations of performance and now with the DOJ decision over the Lois Lerner case regarding the IRS, there is no legal expectation regarding performance either making the federal government fully motivated to hire the dumbest people they can get their hands on so there is always an escape if something goes wrong.

The Department of Justice further stated, “we found no evidence that any IRS official acted based on political, discriminatory, corrupt, or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution. We also found no evidence that any official involved in the handling of tax-exempt applications or IRS leadership attempted to obstruct justice. Based on the evidence developed in this investigation and the recommendation of experienced career prosecutors and supervising attorneys at the department, we are closing our investigation and will not seek any criminal charges.” That statement was provided in a letter to selected members of congress by Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik. So let’s strip away the legalese rhetoric there and get to the heart of what Kadzik was saying. In essence the investigation was run by government employees against government employees for the end goal of protecting government employment. Lerner was told to plead the fifth, say nothing, get out of public office and let the government clean up the mess with a defense of stupidity to conceal their tracks. The government declared of itself that they were too stupid to properly conduct themselves with tax payer resources and that there will never be ramifications for incompetence in public office. Without question, we will get a lot more of the behavior as a result.

Now you know dear reader yet again—with evidence provided from the highest law enforcement office in the land—why we have a Bill of Rights established by the anti-Federalists during the formation of our Constitution at the start of the American concept. We have freedom of speech so that we can call such abuses of power by their true implication—because obviously the DOJ has no interest in doing anything but protecting government employment as a direct arm of radicalized union labor. And we have the right to arm ourselves in case our military and police fall under the malice of future incompetent idiots like Lois Lerner at the IRS. If the IRS can abuse its power why not the local National Guard post? We need guns to protect ourselves by the DOJ definition of incompetence, because they have shown that they will take the side of the fool over the righteous expecting the good to surrender their lives to the bad for the “greater good.” Greater in this case is established by all the hoards of knuckle-draggers who are employed by the federal government. Their employer actually permits stupidity so those of a sane mind out of the Beltway need a way to protect themselves from the stupid—because nobody else will take up the job.

Because of this ruling by the DOJ we now have evidence that under no circumstances we should reduce the number of firearms in our society, because in a time when the DOJ is using stupidity as a defense the only way we can enforce respect among the corrupt is by promising to end their life—because they don’t respect the law. So they must respect the guns we possess—because in reality, that’s all that really protects us from the bad management decisions of the federal government. When they think they can abuse their power—as they have many times and been caught—they are very inclined to continue the behavior. The IRS attacked my friend Justin Binik Thomas and my local Tea Party group at Liberty Township because they assumed that everyone were nice people not inclined toward rambunctious violance—so they were easy targets for showing the vast authority of the IRS as a way to build up their brand of enforcement. As nice as Justin was however, they didn’t expect him or the Liberty Township Tea Party to stick up for themselves using the First Amendment. So the situation backfired on the IRS in a spectacular way. The IRS was clearly guilty of abuse of power and the only way out for them was for the Obama controlled DOJ to plead stupidity to avoid prosecution. If the case had been allowed to fester, the original guilt would have put it within the White House through union connections which was the likely origin Lois Lerner’s radicalism.

These same idiots are the people declaring that we need fewer guns in society. It’s like a robber scouting out potential hits complaining that people have bars on their windows to prevent break-ins. The government wants easy targets and a compliant people, because they are too stupid to deal with a challenge or any philosophic position in favor of freedom, so they want to confiscate guns to have their way and be allowed to mismanage our society. Without guns people like Lois Lerner would be in charge of everything and the abuse of their offices completely unfettered. It is for this very reason that gun sales are so high in America right now. It makes us sleep better at night knowing we can at least take care of ourselves if something dreadful happens. It is quite obvious that we can’t count on the DOJ, the IRS, the White House, the Secretary of State, local law enforcement, the National Guard or even the local school, because they have been given the gift of stupidity to protect them from the ramifications of their own devastating decisions. In the end the thin blue line that resides between justice and chaos is not law enforcement led by more government employees—its in the Second Amendment and under the right to bear arms that Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State authenticated, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” That militia is not a group of idiots ran by the federal government—its individuals fighting for their right to protect their private property and to take back their government when and if that government fails them in the future. With the decision by the DOJ over the IRS case—it is clear that there was a lot of wisdom in Thomas Jefferson’s assumptions. So the best thing to do is to protect yourself from future stupid people. Join the NRA if you haven’t already. Sign up for Second Call Defense. And buy a gun. If you already have one, or two, or a hundred—buy another gun so that the DOJ can get a taste of what their bad decisions cause regarding social behavior patterns.   And if you live near me, buy that gun from the good guys at Right 2 Arms, which is essentially at the end of my street in Liberty Township. It’s government’s problem for their bad decisions—not yours dear reader. Protect yourself from them by using the rights provided at the outset of the country. The lawyers, politicians and theatrical fools have strayed away—and Lois Lerner is the proof of just how bad it really is. The DOJ just confirmed it.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

 

 

The Politically Incorrect Review of Liberty Center: How the future allows people of value to enjoy life

I have written about the Liberty Center development for a long time because I had the fortune of knowing quite a lot about it during the early stages, and have been fascinated by the people building it. I have had the opportunity to travel a lot and know what’s out there, and what’s good and bad about the places I’ve been. Of course since it is in my community I have spent a considerable amount of time there over the last week—and I have to say that I really enjoy it. But if people want a politically correct review of Liberty Center, they can go to the Chamber sites, or read about it in the newspaper. Since my concerns are more philosophically based regarding humanity, and I’m not so concerned about my social status within my community—I can say things that other people can’t—so I will in regard to the monstrous success that Liberty Center has seen during its first week of operation, and the subsequent months and years that it will enjoy, articulate the reason and necessity for its construction.

I was a bit surprised that Tom Farrell who is a trustee in my community and a pretty good guy revealed a bit about why he thought Liberty Center would be successful in the mainstream news. He quite flatly stated that from a trustee point of view—the management of the community—that Liberty Center provided a city-like experience without the crime. I thought that was a bit bold for an area Republican, and it gave me hope that he and others just might be learning something from Donald Trump. It’s far better for everyone if you just tell it like it is. It might hurt some feelings but in the end, it will help everyone. After all, if you take your car to the shop to figure out what’s wrong with it, because its ticking in the engine someplace unseen—it doesn’t do any good for the mechanics to tell you your tire pressure is too low—because those things are not connected. If you want to fix the problem, an accurate diagnosis is needed. Tom hit on a very, very important point that I hope the rest of the country will learn from—because within Liberty Center is the solution to much of what’s wrong with America—which is why I’ve been so excited about it for such a long time.

Lately as I puzzled through my thoughts about Liberty Center I spent some time in downtown Cincinnati. After a recent Bengal game my family walked around the Banks development just as we have enjoyed Newport on the Levy a lot over the years. I have also spent considerable time at Fountain Square, Mt. Adams, Kenwood, Eastgate, Florence and many other places that I consider to be quality “living centers” where shopping complexes and living are brought together in unique ways. I also have the fortune to have in-laws who live in one of the most unusual communities I’ve ever seen in Brevard County, Kentucky right near the intersection of I-265 and I-71. Most of the homes are million dollar bits of real-estate that contain their own office park, shopping and restaurant experience providing a very self-contained experience. Residents can go to the doctor, shop, eat and live within a mile of their home and crime is non-existent. If some slug walks around that community, there is security that runs them out post-haste—no fooling around. You don’t see slackers standing around on street corners, you don’t hear cursing, and you don’t get “undesirables.”

What are undesirables? Well let me define it for you with an example of the new Over-the-Rhine renovations that the city of Cincinnati has spent a lot of money trying to resurrect. My daughter is a professional photographer who spends a lot of time there because people want to capture the history of the area with a photographers spin on the topic of downtown. Her customers want the romance of downtown without the garbage. What her camera doesn’t pick up are the thugs standing on street corners with their pants half down cursing every other word making embarrassments of themselves. Yes Cincinnati has a nice streetcar they are building, yes Over-the-Rhine has been cleaned up a bit—they have some nice restaurants, and during the days it’s a pretty nice place-now. But there are still undesirables standing around everywhere—and that’s not race related activity. If people like Ben Carson were standing on the street corner there would be no problem. But when people who look and act like they want to kill you are standing around looking like detrimental thugs it takes away the fun of going out on the town. Undesirables are people who have personal conduct that is equitable to animal behavior—where their primary objectives are sexual pursuits and pecking order mentality. People of a higher level in life don’t want to deal with undesirables—because they have other things on their mind than just primal desires.

Liberty Center understood this problem from day one in their design. They intended to do something similar to the development I mentioned in Kentucky—which is primarily occupied by horse racing families close to the sport—certainly the upper crest of Louisville society—and do something on a much larger scale in Liberty Township. The residential buildings at Liberty Center are all around five stories to give the illusion down below that people walking on the streets are within a city-scape. The buildings are positioned around the shopping complex so that the area within feels removed from the rural landscape on the outside. Also, useable living space is stacked to utilize bridges and staircases to provide the illusion that there is more complexity to the area than there really is, which is actually a video game programming trick that is quite effective to giving the impression that there is a lot more to something. For what Liberty Center is trying to do, it’s enormously effective.

The sum of the experience is to provide a city simulation without the crime and displeasure of an actual urban environment. My mom for instance stopped going to Tri-County over ten years ago when undesirables essentially pushed her out. I know many people who won’t even go the Costco in Tri-County just because they are afraid of the type of people who now reside around that old shopping district. Undesirables come in all shapes, sizes, sexes and colors—but what they all have in common is that they function from the basic animal instincts of a pubescent teenager. Teenagers are supposed to grow out of that phase with careful parental supervision, but in our society of today—where being a forever teenager is desired, there are just too many people out there who are grown-up teenagers functioning from raw animal instincts, and older people with money and success in their life don’t want to be around those low life scum bags.

After working really hard at your life and making smart decisions—it is fun to dress up with your spouse and go have a nice dinner—and a movie. Liberty Center allows me to take my wife to a nice place and be around nice people. I can go to a movie where only adults can attend, who are older than 21 keeping the teenagers out, so you don’t have to worry about bratty kids kicking the back of your seat, or giggling at boobies on the theater screen. You get to have an experience free of undesirables as much as possible. It’s a free country so low life scum bags can come to Liberty Center, but unlike a real city ran by progressive city governments, the shopping complex is privately owned as opposed to publicly owned. Liberty Center management can hire their own security to make sure that nobody causes any trouble as they are more competent than a city council or a mayor to deal with such issues.

The real benefit of Liberty Center is that it’s a private enterprise managed by competent people who are motivated by profit as opposed to elected bureaucrats. It will stay looking nice and will give everyone what they want from a city without the mess of mismanagement. Liberty Township doesn’t even have a police department which is wonderful. Trustees aren’t running Liberty Center; they just enjoy it with everyone else. The Steiner Group runs the place, and that puts it in the hands of competent management who provide their own security—much better than a bunch of unionized, expensive government workers who are politically accountable to a mayor and city manager. The presence of competency is what makes Liberty Center feel different. It’s not a public park or a community owned monstrosity where thugs, derelicts and panhandlers will be allowed to accost the affluent from Wetherington. Those types of people will not be allowed to bring down the level of quality within Liberty Center. In America being a derelict is a choice. There are too many opportunities for people, all it requires is for people to reach out and grab them. For those too lazy to reach for anything, they will become undesirables because they are parasites on those who aren’t lethargic.

I remember well what it was like when Forest Fair Mall opened over two decades ago. It was like Liberty Center in many ways—it had high hopes of appealing to the upper-class while maintaining the lofty goal of elevating the standard of living for Forest Park and Fairfield. Unfortunately, people who work hard to have money do not like conversing with people who are on welfare, or are just plain lazy, and the two demographics just didn’t mix. The money went to Tri-County for another ten years, or to Kenwood. Forest Fair Mall died slowly because the people around the community were not the type of people who financially affluent people wanted to spend their leisure time with. People are not just people—some are better than others and that is usually determined by their ambition. The Mall was directly reliant on city governments to create the demographic who would shop at their establishment, and the politicians screwed it up. The Mall out of desperation turned toward the nightclub crowd to bring life back to the once promising palace. But that brought more undesirables and pushed out the money. Soon all the Mall had to offer were cheap pieces of crap aimed at teenagers or adults who wanted to be teenagers leaving everyone else to shop somewhere else.

Liberty Center is not reliant on city government for its success. They bring their own management to both living and commercial enterprises and take care of both. And like everything else, things run better as a private sector enterprise than they do as public endeavors. The local government gets to collect a little bit more tax money each year, but they don’t have to make any management decisions about the complex itself. That’s up to Steiner’s people and they are a whole lot more motivated to make sure consumers get what they want—as opposed to professional politicians who seek to coddle the masses to get votes to stay in office. In a lot of ways Liberty Center is a creation out of necessity. People don’t want to associate with undesirables. They want to be around people with shared values and Liberty Center promises that type of experience, without the hassle of low-level people. Not everyone in the world is equal. Some people work harder and more valiantly than others and they deserve a place to go where they can enjoy life. For them, Liberty Center is that place. They get all the benefits of a city without the hassle of cat-calls, and panhandling. And for people in Liberty Township who have been losing their children to the exotic nightlife of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, Liberty Center has just given those kids an alternative without being too far away from home and can have all the fun without the downsides of crime. It is the way of the future, and the reason for it is a direct response to the gross mismanagement of public officials as opposed to private ones. That is why Liberty Center is so special and why it will become the standard everyone else in the future will have to live by. Cities will have to clean up their act or they will lose everything to private sector driven developments—which is fine with me.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Attacking Gunslingers: Why “shooting from the hip” makes a great business leader

I have a bit of a reputation professionally and personally for shooting from the hip, metaphorically speaking. People who say that about me speak it as if it were a bad thing that indicates recklessness. They also say the same type of thing when professional quarterbacks are quick to throw the ball down the field under risky circumstances—they call those people “gunslingers,” as if the term concocted abandon of calculation and patience. So I need to set the record straight on a couple of things that I have been thinking about as I have contemplated the root cause of my sudden obsession with Cowboy Fast Draw. Like my bullwhip work, most of the targeting is done more through feeling than in properly lining up the barrel with a target with careful assessment. I happen to be good at quick targeting, as I have shown under many competitions of speed and accuracy with bullwhips and am routinely very good at the Ohio Bullwhip Fast Draw that we perform each year at the Annie Oakley Days in Greenville, Ohio. There is no time to take care and to aim the bullwhip at a target. I have learned through muscle memory where all the points of trajectory are, how wind affects my aim, and to consider all the factors of targeting under stressful, timed conditions. I have it down to seconds with a bullwhip, and my new obsession with Cowboy Fast Draw is to further speed up my thinking to the hundredths of a second instead of just a second or two. That’s why I’m personally attracted to those types of hobbies—but I find society’s labeling of those types of people to be disturbing and indicative of something much more symptomatic of an overall disease that is crippling our country.

There is a new breed of American, and world bureaucrat educated with modern scholastic emphasis on metaphorically taking more aim before one shoots in life who have deliberately, and maliciously sought to smear the name of the bold and the reckless that stand behind just about every profitable enterprise in the history of mankind.   This has left our nation and world in a state where the very timid and fragile minded rule the world through paperwork, regulations and an emphasis on calculation as the mode of representing quality instead of how quickly a target is hit. Using guns as a metaphor, the modern bureaucrat believes the quality of an endeavor is in the form of the aim, not in the objective of shooting. The reason of course is that since the masses cannot think and act fast, they have placed upon the world a mandate through democracy that the weakest and most timid can rule the corporate world by handcuffing the strong and decisive with mundane regulation and law that they create to give themselves a shot at equality.

With the Cowboy Fast Draw Association what I love most is that the aim and accuracy of the endeavor is all performed by shooting from the hip. If a shooter takes the time to aim, they will lose. Too much time is taken off the clock unless a shooter literally plucks the gun from their holster and levels the barrel just above the rim with a quick pivot and unleashes a shot within a hundredth of a second from seeing a light indicating that action needs to take place. I have thought about this concept for years with my bullwhip work and the net result for me is that when I need to make a hard decision fast, I can and do with tremendous accuracy. I have a great track record of making good decisions in a split second manner. But that’s not good enough for me. I want to be faster, so I am taking up Cowboy Fast Draw to improve myself. When I say that I intend my official career to be that of a gunfighter, this is part of why I reference it this way.

Just because something is shot from the hip or struck without a proper aim—traditionally defined, it does not mean the act is reckless or without skill. Quite the contrary—in many ways shooting from the hip for those skilled in the act is a way to encompass both speed and accuracy into as seamless of an action possible.   Whereas the typical academic is focused on only one of those elements, they have attempted to define the quality of an endeavor based on the time it takes. If speed is desired, then they instantly reference more people to accomplish the task because it plays into their overall collectivist mindset. They don’t like that an individual can provide both speed and accuracy when it comes to complicated tasks, so they have found countless ways to instill laborious monstrosities of inefficiency to give themselves more time to think—which they love to do. But they hate action—actually pulling the trigger at a decision gate.

That is why in many manufacturing fields across the United States, from aerospace to auto manufacturing our ability to produce has been greatly crippled by allowing these timid types who require of themselves to aim very carefully in order to hit a target to strangle our productivity because their primary objective in life has been to diminish the input of the traditional gunslinger—the bright eyed problem solver who shoots from the hip often and hits most of the time. Their jealousy and need for social equality have actually crippled our manufacturing capacity with mundane academics that are so timid to pull the trigger on anything for fear of not landing a mark that they shoot slowly and miss often. When they declare that “so and so” “shoots from the hip” they mean it as an insult, but what they reveal is the source of a vast detriment—the root cause for the declining effectiveness of American manufacturing through improper association toward definitions of quality.

In Cowboy Fast Draw the rules are strict, just as they are in the world of manufacturing. You must have your gun holstered and your hand cannot be in the trigger guard. You must use a single action firearm. The distances you shoot from are 15’, 18’, and 21’, which is quite a distance for a firearm. You cannot shoot before the light comes on. Within that context, you must figure out a way to draw your gun, hit your target and do it within a fraction of a second. If you miss, yet beat your rival to the draw, you don’t get a score. You must have speed and accuracy—just like in our bullwhip competitions. The goal of the skill is to develop both, not just be strong in one facet. You have to be accurate and fast, not just fast, not just accurate. By that unit of measure the timid fuddy-duddy is just as wrong as the hasty fool who is often referenced as a “gunslinger.” So when the bureaucrat says that the person who shoots from their hip is reckless, they are just as dangerous, because their inaction is just as detrimental as a mistake. Just because a shot isn’t taken doesn’t mean it wasn’t needed.

In the field of life, there are many targets and most of them have to be hit at 21’ or less, metaphorically speaking. And they require speed and accuracy to deal with them. Necessity dictates that the quickest to the target gets the prize, and in the competition of life, the first to draw and hit their target wins. Time does not wait for the timid to pull their gun, aim the sights, take a deep breath, let out half of it, then to squeeze the trigger at just the right moment. In life, you have to draw and shoot before an eye can blink. Bureaucrats try diligently to stop time itself with mountains of paperwork to hide the fact that they don’t have the courage to draw and fire. Both actions require decision-making rooted in having a conceptual understanding of the target and hitting it without the aid of eyes and time to guide the bullet to the intended destination. You have to know where the target is in space and time and trust yourself to hit it faster than a mind can think about it.

Those who are successful at shooting from the hip are those like the people in Cowboy Fast Draw. There they dress up in cowboy outfits from the late 1800s period of American history. But they might as well be the deal makers and job creators who have made the economy of America the greatest in the world. Shooting from the hip for them is necessary, and a skill that few have. In their hands, it’s a competent task. But in the hands of the bureaucrat it’s a serious risk that is nearly a guaranteed failure.   Bureaucrats are incorrect to assume that all people shooting from the hip are reckless just because the skill in being successful at it is something they lack. Rather, they should work hard to become better and to stop trying to stop the world with paperwork so that they can “feel” successful. In life you have to hit your targets and you have to do it quickly—before someone else does. The world doesn’t stop for anybody—especially those laced with indecision and timidity that lead to massive bureaucracy. Success finds those who shoot from the hip, because they are able to do things in life with the two ingredients necessary for accomplishment—to perform tasks with speed and accuracy. Nothing else is suitable for a definition of success—and that is why the term “gunslinger” has been slandered to hide the real incompetence of the typical bureaucrat.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Welcome to the Future: Liberty Center opens and a city unfolds within a small town community

imageI really didn’t think it was possible. I always did love the Back to the Future films, especially the second one when they traveled from 1985 to October 21st 2015, which was just a few days ago as of this writing. So I had those old movies on my mind when Liberty Center opened in my neighborhood on October 22, 2015—one day after Back to the Future Day. I parked in the back parking garage behind the new movie theater a little displaced because for my entire life this area had been an empty field alongside I-75. I never imagined that anything of any importance would ever be where I parked my car on that sunny October day. I was meeting my family at the Rusty Bucket but wasn’t quite sure where lead to where, so I made my way south until I found the main road which ran through the center of the complex. It was ironically just like the scene in Back to the Future II, where I came out of an alley into the hard sun of a fall afternoon and the future hit me right in the face. It looked just like Hill Valley from that famous movie series, square and all.

Short of hover boards and flying cars, it was the future as I never would have imagined it. The stores were modern versions of the type I grew up with, but the way they were presented were very tech heavy and architecturally specific. Living space was stacked in creative ways to make a dynamic world that really has not been possible before in any other shopping experience I’ve ever seen. As I thought of some of the places I’ve been, such as Downtown Disney, La Isla in Cancun, or the Americana in Glendale, California, nothing was like what I saw at Liberty Center in my hometown. It was more astonishing than I thought it would be. The reason we ate at the Rusty Bucket was because it was next door to the Cobb movie theater which is extremely important to me. I wanted to talk to the owners about some upcoming plans, and that was why my family was there on opening day. It was as nice as I would have imagined a luxury theater to be that has made its mark in Tampa, Florida where another shopping destination that I love a lot, The International Mall is rather common.

As a guy, I don’t like shopping very much—my wife does, but I don’t like the task of actually shopping. I do love the exhibition of capitalism, especially when it’s as openly unapologetic as it is at Liberty Center. As I’ve said many times, I have a soft spot for developers because they are often the first cogs in the wheel toward economic development. Because of their creations money moves through an economy and in an age where the shopping experience is competing directly with online sales, something new has to be tried, and they did at Liberty Center—a long time in the making.

Yes they have an Apple Store. Yes, they have a really nice Victoria’s Secret which is good for me and my wife. She likes the quality of that store and it makes me happy to see her happy. Yes they have a number of upper crust restaurant experiences. Looming over the square I was in was a large facade of a Marriot hotel looking down into the action below. It replaced the clock tower in the Back to the Future film regarding iconic skyline. As I hiked and drove the back roads that used to pass through that location way back in 1985 I never would have imagined that in 2015 there would be terraced gardens exotic fountains, and advanced shopping destinations in such a place, unless I could have been placed into a time machine and shown first-hand.

And that’s where my family found me, they were perched above the shops on a patio waving to me to come up and join them in the sun. Step for step I felt just as Marty McFly when he first saw Hill Valley in 2015. It was a strange experience that I couldn’t have anticipated even as I watched them build the place brick by brick. Liberty Township instantly had a downtown district that was every bit as cultured and sophisticated as any of the big cities of America or the world for that matter. As I thought of the countless hours I’ve spent around Fountain Square in Cincinnati on business and pleasure surrounded by skyscrapers and dozens of neatly tucked restaurants situated everywhere, the rural community of Liberty Township had instantly built for itself a downtown that looked big time, but was small enough to still have the feel of a tight-knit community.

If engineers designing living conditions for intergalactic space travelers had to design something that divided function, luxury, and necessity into an all-encompassing package Liberty Center would be it. It was small and enormously large all at the same time and surrounded shoppers with an all-encompassing experience. People walked the streets without worrying about prostitutes and beggars—which is impossible in most big cities these days totally ruining the experience of economic frivolity. A quick trip down Times Square in New York or the strip in Vegas as a couple out for a night together means you are often molested by whores and malcontents. Vegas is terrible for that kind of thing. Times Square is nearly as bad. Liberty Center was free of that mess—but it had all the good things left behind. It was for all matters of thought a conservative utopia. If John Galt had built a shopping center, this is what he would have designed, from the famous novel Atlas Shrugged. It had all the plus elements of an economic development without all the trash created by liberal city governments who mismanage their downtowns into a trash heap of mixed values and nonsense. Liberty Center was built for people who like the good life, and know how to live it.

I heard up to his opening that Liberty Center would essentially be a carbon copy of The Greene in Dayton, or Newport on the Levy in Northern Kentucky—but it was obvious that it was different right from the start. It was the infusion of sophistication mixed with rural charm that really is unequal and reminded me almost of a movie set, something that is common at Universal Studios where complicated streets change the whole feel of a place just one block from a previous position. Clearly the designers had learned something from those entertainment complexes in Florida as far as space utilization where geographically the terrain may seem simple, but architecturally a visitor might feel like they had visited a new world getaway by the time they walked from one end to the other.

It was special more for me because I picked just the right spot to walk in at just the right time of day to nearly simulate a Back to the Future moment. As I stepped onto a sidewalk out into the Center square a car went by, a modern looking Cadillac nearly on queue with the events of when the same thing happened to Marty McFly. All that was missing were the flying cars and the holographs, but that technology isn’t that far off, and Liberty Center looks staged up to take advantage when it does hit the market. On one end was an enclosed mall that led to Dillards and Dick’s Sporting Good, both marvelous stores in their own right. At the other a Marriott hotel and a gorgeous movie theater that really was designed in one of my dreams—and in the middle was everything else.

It was for me, the future.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Socialists Are Here: Canada elects Justin Trudeau

Remember what I said a few years ago about the organization Socialist International and how their progressive intentions were spreading across the globe. Issues like open borders, marijuana legalization, and gun banning are their highlight reels of priority? Their goal is to get everyone essentially stoned so that they will assimilate into one giant non gender, none nationality species to gather under the rainbow of global governance. And in their crosshairs are on the United States and its cherished sovereignty, because as long as that exists, the goals of Socialist International are strained with competition which of course they can’t have. Well, guess what, Justin Trudeau’s election in Canada is the latest casualty toward left-leaning dystopian chaos that seeks to plague the minds of the masses toward oblivion.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/10/20/canadian-liberals-poised-to-win-majority-unseating-conservative-government/

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/21/world/americas/elections-canada.html?_r=0

Again, I hate being right all the time. I predicted this. The entire world is plunging toward socialism, France is already there, England is trying to dig out from under it, Germany is certainly committed to progressivism, Italy is drowning, Greece is toast, Spain is deeply in the hole and those are the good countries. The Middle East is corrupted by a mix of political communism and radical religion both collectivist based. India is impoverished, China is communist. Russia is pretending to be free-market when it’s really a totalitarian regime. All of Africa is destitute with socialism, especially South Africa. Australia is deeply corrupted now with socialism and only has the economic power of a large state in America. South America is mostly socialist leaning and Mexico is of course rooted in social justice philosophies that have destroyed their economy with an origin in Marxism. So around the world the United States is all there is regarding free market potential and the world is gunning for it. We shouldn’t cooperate, unfortunately, half our society is inclined to.

For that matter all of Canada only has as half as much GDP as California in the United States which is falling toward socialism presently. Progressives have essentially taken over California with socialist leaning concepts which will dramatically alter California’s economy over the next couple decades. But Canada is already there. It didn’t take much for the measly 34 million residents of Canada to vote in favor of socialism, because they are a beaten people looking for the free stuff that government can confiscate and redistribute to their population. That is the primary reason that the advocates of wealth redistribution promote open borders, because it changes free counties to socialist ones which spread the disease at the ballot box. America is under attack in its schools, its government and from all countries surrounding it. It is being attacked because it maintains a capitalist system.

The media loves that Canada has turned toward the political left, because that is their desire for America. They look to the south and see Mexico and now to the north, Canada is even more socialist leaning than they were five years ago, and the media sees progressive politics—which is what progressives are all about—progressing beyond capitalism toward socialism and global government centralized within the United Nations. They want an end to national sovereignty, personal sovereignty—which is why they support abortion, casual sex and homosexuality and most of all they seek the destruction of the concept of private property. In the United States they attack private property through guilt—by declaring the Native American Indian had land stolen from them which we are the perpetrators of. This led to casino legislation to empower the Indian, but in reality it was intended to make more gambling addicts, drunks and whores so that our society would be easier to conquer. Progressives also attack property rights with taxes attaching everything to property so to make it too expensive for single land holders to possess too much. It’s all very philosophically coordinated.

It isn’t a conspiracy to say such things. It’s a fact, the socialism is all around us and it is very un-American. Canada just made a huge mistake, and they will feel the pain of that mistake in time. But what the socialists of the world really need is to put out the light of capitalism residing in America so that the people living in those other countries won’t look toward the United States as an example that they’ll have to live up to. Justin Trudeau is just one pawn in a global chess game that is intent on cornering the king of capitalism—America into a checkmate and the intentions are now well at hand. The very fact that on our northern border are socialists and on our southern border die-hard Marxist rejects from the turn of the last century, open border advocates aren’t just looking for more Democratic voters, they want to change the nature of our country into an assimilation of progressivism.

They don’t want the strong white male cowboys of American culture; they want the people who are easy to run over and to control into social justice concerns. Those priorities are being taught in our schools to our kids right now to change them into a voting population, who will vote for people like Justin Trudeau in America—a low testosterone beta type of man who could easily put on a dress and feel right at home. Progressives want more Bruce Jenner, lost souls who don’t know what they are, so that progressives can remold them into a global assimilation of progressive ideas—which is another reason why even public schools are bending over backwards to make he/shes feel socially acceptable. It isn’t because they care about the feelings of the individual, it’s because they want to change individuals into a mess of soupy human assimilation. They use sexuality, marijuana, and all forms of decadence to spread the concepts of collectivism because it is only there that the sins of individual loss of sanctity can be recovered once surrendered. They are trying to break you down dear reader one sin at a time and their goal is to turn your neighborhood into Canada, France, and Greece—with the political elite in charge of your life—so you don’t have to think about it and have more time for video games and to surf the Internet on your smart phone.

Only when they suppress the United States behind a wall of collectivism—a league of nations—will capitalism eventually fall—which was always the goal of early 20th Century communists. They have softened up their rhetoric since then with their mind on the long prize, which Justin Trudeau represents. Everywhere you look now socialism is clear to see and the economies of those places reflect that stale approach to productivity with pathetic GDP numbers for the land masses they represent. The only way they can hide the scam is by eradicating capitalism from the earth. That is why the United States has a target placed upon it from those old Socialist International buffoons and their misplaced philosophic investment into the broken man of Karl Marx. A poor soul that was used by the forces of Europe to send communism into Russia to destroy the family that controlled that giant land mass from competition with their neighbors for economic survival. Now that science experiment has spiraled out of control and sucked the world into a black hole of economic development for which Justin Trudeau is but the symptom. And it’s not only coming to American—in many ways—its already here.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Metaphysics of Quality in Guns: Unexpected wonder in Cowboy Fast Draw Association products

With me it’s always about quality—as in the Metaphysics of Quality defined by the philosopher Robert Pirsig. As I get excited about something, like I often do when I take the time to write about things it is because whatever it is shows obvious signs of the Metaphysics of Quality. To me, that MOQ is very important. More important than most everything else, so when I see it, I get very excited and I gush about how wonderful it is. That is why I love architectural achievements like the Liberty Center shopping complex near my home—because it has obvious elements of MOQ within its construction, vision and implementation. I enjoy fine restaurants for the same reason even if I might stand against the social placement of those economic devices—if I see that there is a positive MOQ involved I get excited about whatever it is. I see MOQ as being more important than legal concerns or personal rights because not all people are of a “high quality.” That can be a dangerous road to travel down, but my criteria for judgment is contained with the Metaphysics of Quality as defined by the fine book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It’s a very important concept to behold.

So I was rather stunned to open up the box from my new group, the Cowboy Fast Draw Association containing my membership information and my targeting equipment. I’ll have to admit, I know a lot of these cowboy types and over the years, most of them barely scrape by. As good of people as they are, they often don’t have much money and do live from paycheck to paycheck. Their idea of quality is usually something very tacky from a flea market. When I placed a very expensive order with the Cowboy Fast Draw Association, I’ll have to admit that I didn’t have very high expectations. I anticipated that what they’d send me I’d have to spend hours at Radio Shack trying to piece together additional parts. I had ordered a Cowboy Fast Draw shooting lane, which consists of a metal target, a light, sensor, a switch to start the timer and a clock that breaks down the time to thousands of a second. A lot of the equipment is fairly advanced stuff—so my expectations where that there would be issues with assembly.

The way the system works is that you buy a fast draw gun, for me it was a Vaquero, a speed draw custom holster, wax bullets for ammunition, special .45 Colt ammunition cases specially designed to hold a shotgun primer. Then you set all that up to the Fast Draw Target System.   A light comes on the target, you draw and shoot the metal plate and the time it takes to hit the target is recorded. There are a couple of different modes, there is competition mode and practice mode. Under practice the timer will randomly run through different start times so that the shooter can’t anticipate the light. That helps the shooter develop properly their reaction time to the start light. It is pretty sophisticated for a shooting range, but once built, makes shooting relatively cheap—about six cents per shot. The wax bullets are about $44 for a thousand and the primers can be obtained for a similar cost. Once it’s all set up, it’s easy to use and efficient.

Putting together the target assembly was simple; the wires were color coded, the sensors screwed to the target plate and the start light attached with a magnet behind the target that shines through a Plexiglas hole in the face. Within about 15 minutes I had the whole thing together—which surprised me greatly. I had budgeted about 3 hours for the effort, and it took a lot less time. Even more remarkable was that everything worked. That shouldn’t have shocked me, but it did. Even on all the little timers were label indicators for Cowboy Fast Draw very professionally done. If I didn’t know better I would have thought I bought the whole setup from Cabela’s for several thousand dollars. It was good enough to sell as a mass market item—not what I would have expected for an organization with not yet 5000 members.

That’s when it hit me that these people running the Cowboy Fast Draw Association were people functioning naturally from the MOQ philosophy by their very nature. I doubt it’s something they are consciously aware of, but they had taken the time to do all the little things very right—including the packaging of the equipment within the box they shipped it to me in. Everything was very carefully wrapped and complete—someone who really cared about the contents put the whole thing together. But even slicker was that somebody had figured out how to make all these things work together to make one of the best secrets of modern shooting possible. And they didn’t skimp on anything; all the components were good quality items built to stand the rigor of shooting at them with firearms.

That’s where I really started increasing my respect for the Cowboy Fast Draw Association. Part of what killed the Wild West Arts Club which I had been a part of for quite some time was that they over expensed themselves. They charged way too much money for items to cover areas of their operational costs that they had gone into the red on. The result is all that’s left of them is what consists of my little Annie Oakley group that meet each year in Greenville, Ohio during the last weekend of July. One of the reasons for me picking bullwhips to work with as opposed to firearms was because nobody had figured out how to make such a thing work in a neighborhood setting—a place that didn’t require 100 acres of land to go shooting—so there was no way to practice or get good. With this targeting system that the Cowboy Fast Draw Association had come up with, a typical gun range could be set up in a garage. The shotgun primers are not much louder than a cap gun and the bullets fly out about the same rate as a juiced up pellet gun. It really isn’t much harder than the projectiles used in paintball—which is perfect for practicing the western arts of fast draw and gun spinning. These guys had figured out a lot of very neat concepts and they weren’t trying to make a killing off it—they just want to expand the sport, so everything was very reasonably priced. It was priced for expansion—not grotesque profit. There is no way the Cowboy Fast Draw Association has large margins on their sales. Yet they still put all the effort into the job as if they were making millions of dollars. That was impressive.

It doesn’t happen very often. But when it does, I write about it. Cowboy Fast Draw is one of those associations that have their roots in the Metaphysics of Quality. Not only was the sport of Fast Draw something that is good for all American shooters, the association itself was filled with quality people who took the extra steps to exceed expectations. I find that same attention to detail with Brownells, they are always very conscious about what and how they ship items. For that matter gun companies in general are so pleasant to work with. They really put an emphasis on quality and customer service. Even down to an association like Cowboy Fast Draw, the emphasis on American ingenuity and quality is assumed as an afterthought. If I liked firearms a lot before I assembled my target lane from CFDA I really respected them after—because even a very specific field of endeavor such as fast draw brings out the best of what is left in America.

When people wonder what I expect from others it is best embodied by CFDA. I expected a group of people barely hanging on to throw some things in a box and toss it my way for the exchange of some easy money. What I received as a lot of love and care for firearms and tradition that was obvious by the way the box was taped up. The products were reasonably priced and still the people cared about what they were doing. America used to be filled with those types of people. Now it’s a rarity—so much so that I’m very happy when I meet people or organizations that possess a level of Metaphysics of Quality that are respectable. Especially when it is unexpected—if I pay $70 dollars for a steak dinner, I expect quality—if I’m buying wax bullets and fast draw targets, I expect the kind of service that you might find at a casino or flee market. And in the case of CFDA, I was extremely surprised to find a very quality organization equal to a fine steak dinner.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Boycotting Disney: To do so, or not to do so–that is the question

It is worth listening to. Alex Jones during a recent show had several melt-downs as the subjects of the day overwhelmed his commentary. I think Alex overreacts a lot of times, and I don’t think the “global elite” are as smart and sinister as he thinks they are. I do agree with him that they “think” they are the smartest people in any room and that they do have global plans to eradicate borders, cheapen values, control people through their drinking water, and generally take over the world with a one world government dissolving national sovereignty completely. I do believe “they” are guilty of many false flag operations and malicious activity ranging from the recent trend of tattoos among young people to the collapse of the United States economy. But much of what they are doing they get by with not because they are the smartest people on planet earth, but because most people are too lazy to challenge them. That’s really what it all comes down to, and the reason they get the illusion that they are the “illuminated” ones who should rule us all is because not enough people tell them what a bunch of idiots they are. Sorry, that’s not going to happen—but it won’t stop them from trying. So to understand the scope of the situation, I suggest dear reader that you watch and listen to this Alex Jones show which goes on for a while. It is well worth the investment of time.

Like Alex, I do believe the primary media corporations—Disney included—are all wrapped up in this psychological game of remolding the human mind toward progressive sentiments. George Soros has been a major player in shaping that vision and it concerns me greatly that Marvel comics has moved in such a progressive direction—going so far to make Alex Jones one of the villains in their storylines—where a black Captain America fights against the Tea Party types in favor of global politics. That is not the Captain America I grew up with, and under Disney’s watch they are allowing for this mass progressivism to filter in and attempt to reshape the thinking of the consuming public. That is one of the reasons I am concerned about Star Wars. I am hopeful that it will be what I want it to be, but there is a real fear that they might attempt to blur the lines between good and evil putting a progressive twist on a storyline that was molded out of American westerns.

Unlike Alex, I won’t be boycotting Disney. I love Disney World and I do like Disney films—some of them—not all of them. I do get angry, and I would spend more money at Disney if they stayed away from cramming gay rights down my throat with rainbow-colored castles and employees who are too gay to assimilate properly into society. When a ride announcer is talking, I don’t want to be made aware that the guy might be a butt-plugger because of the tone of his speech. Disney is a family oriented company—at least that’s the way Uncle Walt planned it—and if Disney as a corporation strays too far off the path of American tradition—they’ll lose a lot of money. In the end, money talks and ideology walks, and the board at Disney will pick the money over progressive George Soros inspired social assimilation strategies.

That doesn’t mean however that Alex is wrong. Rather than boycott and not enjoy the family aspects of Disney I vote with my wallet, and believe me they do know what works and what doesn’t. I’m not going to buy comics of superheroes who fight for United Nations goals over United States sovereignty. Young people may be seduced by the stories, but the end game will cost Disney and their shareholders will notice the drop in interest among their readership. The Disney Channel and much of the content at the Florida parks are some of the best family entertainment in the world currently. I even like ESPN because it has a bit of family fun to it—it’s fairly clean and optimistic, the way you’d expect Disney to be. But I notice it a lot where individual employees, or even producers and directors attempt to slide progressive ideas to young people under the door, which people like Bob Iger likely don’t notice. Iger and even George Lucas lean too far to the political left these days, but I don’t think they are overtly trying to reprogram the youth into becoming fluoride seduced homosexuals who want to stick their junk into every knothole in the fence. I think they want from their perspective to do the right thing and they have a lot of liberals radicalized by creative institutions to think too far to the political left working for them and that radicalism shows up in their products. I can promise this, if the mainstream American public feels uncomfortable with the product Disney produces, they won’t buy it.

For example, take Demi Moore for example that played the lead female in the Disney film The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1996. That same summer Demi who had been a top box office superstar prior to that year also stared in Striptease, which was essentially an early version of Magic Mike. Demi got naked and was supposedly a stripper in that film to take care of her kid because she was a single mom. It was a heavily progressive movie that was a joke and people rejected it. It sold a few tickets because people wanted to see Demi Moore naked, but once they did, they were done with her, and her career tanked—immediately. It didn’t help that she was in the Disney film. Notice you don’t hear the Alan Menken songs from that cartoon at the Disney stores these days. The film only made $325 million at the box office—which was good, but the repeat business wasn’t there because there were a lot of moms who had been turned off by Demi Moore who didn’t take their little kids to see The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Disney hasn’t really recovered from that tragedy in their animated film division until Frozen broke the spell a few years ago.

As Alex Jones says, the entire industry is being controlled by these progressive idiots, and I can say that he is largely right. Hollywood would make a lot more money if they would step of the ideological bandwagon and make movies that Americans want. But a lot of producers and directors are hoping that a lack of competition will force America to adapt their values to the products they are producing. What they are discovering however is the opposite, that people are just tuning them out in favor of some other entertainment option. If Disney puts a couple of gay people on the screen kissing in an animated feature, they may never recover their reputation and they know that. Society won’t change the way that the progressive radicals hope it will, and Disney won’t have the patience to play the waiting game of a century long reprogramming of the human mind. They are expected to maintain profit growth each business quarter. Right now Bob Iger has positioned the Disney Company around Star Wars which shows strong signs of maintaining that anticipated growth through at least 2021. But, if Star Wars becomes more progressive, that whole formula is in serious jeopardy, and the company is at risk.

For Disney to crash and burn, the way Alex is preaching—because of their participation in progressive political theater, a boycott isn’t necessary. All it will take are declined revenue streams from books, t-shirts, park attendance and Wal-Mart toys. A drop of 5% would destroy Disney, because of the extraordinary cost of their business model. So even if Disney execs were at the Bilderberg meetings—which I believe some are, or if they attend the Bohemian Grove meetings and burn effigies of sacrifice to pagan gods of a time long past—they aren’t that smart. If Disney abuses their mythological product making devices for the sake of Bohemian collectivists, they’ll come up short because the American public will reject that product in favor of something else.

To me the “global elite” aren’t that smart. They make a lot of mistakes and the only way they hide those mistakes from the public is by keeping the media they largely control from reporting it. But people do reject their products—often, and they do feel the pain. Even if Disney executives wanted to make a romantic comedy animated feature about two gay guys getting married and living happily ever after—they couldn’t because the American public would reject it. Just as Marvel owned by Disney is making a huge mistake by trying to make their superheroes more progressively oriented. Young men grow up to become conservatives once they start raising a family and they’ll abandon the Marvel product in the future if Disney goes in that direction.   People are people, and their desires are innate—meaning they come from raw instinct and evolution. Of those innate desires are sexual unions between a man and a woman because that activity advances the human race with new generations—that strong lead male characters are preferred, and that Disney princesses should not take off their cloths—or the public will reject them. In the end the marketplace of capitalism takes care of everything. But it’s important to know who is trying what and for what reason. And on that topic, Alex Jones is 100% correct. Intentions are quite obvious. Competency is another matter.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Cowboy Fast Draw Member 4265: My alias is Cliffhanger

About a decade ago when my oldest daughter’s boyfriend from Europe was trying to win me over for support, he put more than the average effort in to impress me. He joined me with my bullwhip friends in competitions and became pretty good. He and I worked for many hours in my backyard developing further the bullwhip fast draw modeled after the Ohio Fast Draw Association that also competed at our events for years. He even started dressing like me in some ways, with his own spin to the outfit. This of course made my daughter very happy and convinced her to make a long-term commitment to the fella. Whereas bad fathers are the type of people who make the common sluts and bar trash that are so prevalent these days, good fathers raise girls who think about bigger things so endorsements of potential mates are important to such daughters. For her the icing on the cake was that my future son-in-law bought himself an outback hat similar to mine and started wearing it everywhere very proudly.image image image

One night, he and I were philosophizing about life and the nature of it in my backyard and he asked me about why I wore a hat so much. I told him that it was to distinguish myself from the common flock of people. In America the Cowboy Way was a code of conduct that exhibited a value system which exceeded modern boundaries and that my hat was an obvious show of support for that value system. Wearing the hat was my way of dressing for the part and my role in preserving that way of life. I went on to say that my values exceeded even those of the Cowboy Way—I was more stringent on many of them and went further on others. My favorite cowboy movies were not the John Wayne classics, or even the Lone Ranger, but they were Zorro and the famed Clint Eastwood westerns like Pale Rider and The Outlaw Josie Wales. High Planes Drifter to me is one of the most sophisticated westerns ever filmed—it was essentially Ayn Rand set in the west—it was an overman which came to a town to straighten out the justice which was long overdue. Whether the protagonist was a ghost from the past or a highly skilled more than man type—it was my favorite western and when I wore my hat, it was a tribute to those types of philosophic ideals.

I’ve been content to keep things pretty much independent of the outside world. I don’t need a lot of social support, so my way of doing things has worked just fine for me. My adherence to the Cowboy Way has been a silent code that I have not rammed down the throats of everyone I have met too much—other than wearing my hat in public most of the time. It did the job with my son-in-law and let him know what kind of family he was marrying into and I was happy with that. However, the days where that was enough are gone—the world has moved further away from that Cowboy Way in recent years and I don’t find that acceptable. Politically the Trump run for president has been a godsend, because he is covering a lot of the topics I have for the last five years, but on a bigger stage with the press eating out of his hand. So I don’t feel a need to continue beating on that drum, since somebody else has it covered—at least for now. Additionally I have a respectable number of grandchildren all of a sudden, and like that impressionable potential mate that my future son-in-law was—kids need much more of a role model figure much earlier which is my job—and I take it very seriously. My son-in-law was around 15 to 16 at the time of our talk in the backyard; he’s now climbing toward thirty fast. Time does move quickly and if you want to make an impression, you better do it quick. Kids are ruined if you don’t get to them by the age of 11 or 12. In my son-in-law’s case he was lucky to have been raised in England with a traditional way which protected him from the corruption of progressive cities like London, New York, and San Francisco. But he wanted more and he was on my doorstep looking for it, and it was my job to make sure the young lad was at least pointed in the right direction not just for his sake, but my daughter’s. After all, you raise these kids, give them all this hope, and they need to have people in their lives who share those values. The task is a rather large one. But by the time I knew him, most of his foundation thoughts were already in place. What I was saying might have small influences over how he conducted his life, but major ones probably wouldn’t be possible that late in his climb toward manhood. I promised myself that when I started having grandchildren that I would step up this Cowboy Way philosophy for their sake so that they’d have the right tools equipped intellectually to deal with a modern world spiraling over the precipice. I am one hundred percent sure that the Cowboy Way is the answer to much of what sickens America right now, and that is one major thing that Donald Trump cannot have much impact on as a presidential candidate. So I have taken major steps in advocating the Cowboy Way in a fashion that I had long been thinking about—taking up Cowboy Fast Draw as a sport.

As a grown man I probably shouldn’t have been so excited to join up with the Cowboy Fast Draw Association. My package of materials arrived the day that my new granddaughter arrived home from the hospital after being born. It was a huge forty pound package that contained a lot of lights, timers and targeting equipment. Included was my new membership card and some pins that will come in handy down the road. My membership number is 4265 and of course my alias is Cliffhanger. In Cowboy Fast Draw all members must have an alias so of course mine would be Cliffhanger which is the philosophic foundation of this whole endeavor. In my fictional pulp series The Curse of Fort Seven Mile I wanted advance the direction of the character—but before I could do that of course I had to live the reality first—as my fiction has to reflect reality—otherwise I’m not interested in doing it. My membership card clearly has CLIFFHANGER written on it with a disclaimer on the back for police officers saying, “THE BEARER OF THIS CARD IS A PROFESSIONAL FAST DRAW COMPETITOR AND CARRIES SINGLE ACTION REVOLVERS FOR PURPOSES OF DEMONSTRATION AND COMPETITION.” In short, when roaming around wherever and need to maintain my practice with single action revolvers to maintain and increase my skills toward the Cowboy Way, cops shouldn’t be concerned or alarmed, because I’m a member of the Cowboy Fast Draw Association. Of course if that isn’t enough and I end up in some kind of self-defense altercation, I’ll call my buddies at Second Call Defense and let them handle the police—which is the other reason I have suddenly become so openly pro gun and an advocate of Second Call Defense. I have to protect my investment.

The Cowboy Fast Draw Association reminds me of how our Wild West Arts Club used to be over a decade ago. In a lot of ways, its much better. It was quite a privilege to open up my membership material and see several issues of the Gunslinger’s Gazette included. The group is working on expanding their membership base to over 5000 of which I was number 4265. I’d like to see it at over 20,000 and climbing, because I think it contains within it the essence that every American should be striving to behold as a nation built on philosophy and freedom—the Cowboy Way. The Gunslinger’s Gazette is essentially a publication dedicated to the Cowboy Way so it was wonderful to see a physical copy of the paper instead of the online edition I had been reading.

But to top it off the culmination of all this has not been easy. I have been a bullwhip guy for many decades, so accepting a new skill has not been painless for me. However, I have done pretty much what I can with bullwhips. I like what some of my friends have done to break records with them, but as a symbol of the Cowboy Way, bullwhips need help because they are not part of the American consciousness the way that single action firearms have been. So I needed to add that skill to my wheelhouse and I promised myself at a certain time “professionally” that I would buy my new Vaquero by Ruger and start this journey. Well that time came for me a few weeks ago. It had taken me a long time to get there, but I eventually did, and the very first thing I did was purchase the Vaquero which now sits by my side everywhere I go. I have to work with it all the time to build the muscles up in my hands, and that was the final gate to this new section of my life.

Needless to say, I’m proud to be affiliated with the Cowboy Fast Draw Association under the name of Cliffhanger. I’m also proud to be a part of Second Call Defense which helps make this new sport possible with the legal support that will help protect the validity of that membership card by CFDA. Having a firearm is an essential part of the Cowboy Way just like wearing the hat. One of the reasons my son-in-law was attracted to American life was that they didn’t allow firearms in England. He met my daughter and wanted to win me over essentially so that he could own firearms. It was my job to help him find what he was looking for. But that need doesn’t end with him, there are millions of people in just the same situation—they just don’t know how to go about it. That’s where introducing them to the Cowboy Way will help—it explains why the Second Amendment is so important and if the police get too power hungry at the sight of Cowboy Fast Draw Association members armed with single action Ruger Vaqueros on the plain states of Iowa, or Montana at a local burger joint on the way to a competition, Second Call Defense will be there to help preserve that Cowboy Way when the questions are asked. It is within these types of people who America needs to get to know itself once again—those who read the Gunslinger’s Gazette.

My grandchildren are going to get what they need; I’ll make sure of it. And of that necessity is a strong understanding of the Cowboy Way. I don’t preach to people who don’t want to listen, and I raise children that way, under a laissez-faire approach that allows individuals to invest of themselves into what I’m selling. If they walk away, they walk away, and I won’t track them down to the ends of the earth to help them. Rather I live by example, which is one of the most important parts of the Cowboy Way. And with my new membership into the Cowboy Fast Draw Association, and my friends at Second Call Defense, the gunsmithing equipment at Brownells the powder purchases from Cabela’s and many other support organizations, we’re going to protect that Second Amendment from the trying times that are before us. And it all starts with the beauty and simplicity of the Ruger Vaquero. This is going to be fun!

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

$18 Trillion Dollars in New Spending: Bernie Sanders and the comedy of a proposed socialist government

I don’t think I have ever laughed as hard as I did when I learned about Bernie Sanders proposed budget if he wins President of the United States in 2016. I know Sanders is a socialist, and I know his usual sales pitch for progressive policies. He is essentially a carbon copy of the typical school levy supporter—so I’ve heard his kind many times. I have been aware that he has been doing well among socialists, communists and progressive Democrats, but I didn’t know the details until Fox News did a little exposé about Sanders and covered how much his programs would cost the United States—and they did it with a straight face. The number……………………drum roll please……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………and remember, this was supposed to be serious……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..$18 trillion dollars!

I don’t know what planet this guy is from nor if he even has a brain. If all the wealth of every billionaire were 100% confiscated it wouldn’t even begin to pay for all of Bernie Sanders proposed projects. Keep in mind that we are nearly $19 trillion dollars in debt now—Bernie proposes to double that amount as President of the United States. The GDP of the entire nation is only around $17-19 Trillion per year so there is no way that the bill for Bernie’s dreams could ever hope to be paid for by any amount of money anywhere. There isn’t enough money in the world to cover his budget—yet nobody even covered it. Like I said, Fox News went over the material “fair and balanced.”

I laughed so hard I lost my voice from straining my vocal cords. It may be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. I know there are stories of my mother-in-law promising my sister-in-law that she could have the moon in her bedroom if she’d be good when she was a little girl, which I have always thought was a ridiculous promise to make—because kids don’t know better, and they expect you to deliver. This budget from Bernie Sanders is more ridiculous than that and a good part of the nation like a small child thinks it’s actually possible. That is funny!

If that is what the Democrats have to pack stadiums with enthusiasm, they are in a world of serious trouble. I know the political left thinks Donald Trump is just as ridiculous. However, the difference is Trump has an actual track record of creating wealth. Bernie has nothing. He’s just an old hippie from Vermont—a socialist who has slid through the cracks for years and as an old man has the supporters of the malcontents and anti-capitalists losers who want free stuff and an entitlement society. I don’t blame Bernie for being a senile old man drowning in communist ideology—but the people who support him might as well be cast on the television show, The Walking Dead. No brain zombies destined to rot their way through life on the backs of the hard-working.

I know I’ve always stated that liberals are unrealistic, too collectivist in their philosophic demeanor, and are detriments to themselves—but Bernie Sanders indicates that I have understated their vast stupidity. The real answer to this upcoming election is one of two paths, you either go with Trump and hope that he can do as he has with his private wealth and explode our national GDP to 7-20% growth, or you tell Americans that they have to pull up the boot straps and cut, cut, and cut some more. America will have to cut Social Security, welfare benefits, Medicare—everything because the money is going to run out soon and the ambition to make more money will evaporate. Under liberal leadership the “rich” will stop trying leaving fewer opportunities to build wealth that can be taxed to pay for everything. It’s not hard to understand. America is at that point, right now. Politicians either have that hard talk with the American people or some politician—like Trump—will have to put their name and reputation on creating a new day of capitalism that can carry the burdens with excessive economic growth unheard of in the history of mankind. I am rooting for Trump so that America doesn’t have to go through the pain of all those hard cuts. But in the back of my mind, I think it’s unavoidable anyway. Even if Trump were only 50% successful in all that he’s promising, America is still in trouble. The Bernie Sanders method is just unfathomable. It’s not even on the radar scope of possibility.

It has probably been noticed by long time readers here that I have a sudden vigorous interest in firearms. It’s not because I didn’t like them before, but because I see an expanding role in their value. Most of my articles have been about education reform and economic issues up to this point hoping that sense would evolve into action and bad times might be averted. Well, I no longer have that hope. The moral depravity of our society, the terrible work ethic of the younger generations, the debt, the effects of that bad education system add up to a lot of bad things on the horizon. Guns will be a larger part of my life because I see a greater need for the foundations of the original Bill of Rights. If I lived during the days of the Constitutional Convention I would have been an anti-Federalist and would avoid large government involvement in everything. So the Bill of Rights have more power to me than the original Constitution because it is too “pro government” for my taste. The present situation is a perfect example of what happens when there is too much Federal control given to incompetent people. Bernie Sanders would expand that incompetence by thousands of times their present imposition—which nothing could survive. That’s why the situation is so funny.

An anti-Federalist position is much cheaper than a Federalist one—which is a more effective way to communicate the matter since so many Republicans and Democrats are interchangeable in today’s world. They just want big government spending on different things. For the anti-Federalist, we don’t need government to solve child custody issues, we would handle it ourselves. We wouldn’t need lawyer to protect us from immanent domain land grabs. We’d settle it directly with the advocate and either get rich on the deal or erase them from the earth using the protection afforded to us with the 2nd Amendment and perhaps even the 4th and 5th. Everything would be cheaper if only the Bill of Rights were followed—we’re not even talking about the original Constitution here which the Supreme Court has essentially wrecked with watered down case-law. Bernie Sanders is suggesting a lot more of this kind of mess—not less of it which then creates a lot of unintended consequences that are very negative.

With the expansion of government comes directly the expansion of incompetence because when people are well paid for doing mediocre work, the incentive to give more of the same becomes the driving force. So not only are programs like Bernie Sanders suggests too expensive, but they drive down the quality of what is made in the country’s GDP proportionally as an unintended consequence. A hundred years ago, I might have understood that Bernie might have had an audience for his ridiculous proposals—because the ideas were new then, and hadn’t been tried very much. But now they have—we have over a hundred years of progressive failure that just about everything we see in a decrepit state can be blamed on. And now that idiot wants more of that same failure—but in even greater quantities. Now that is hilarious!

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.