Tag: philosophy

Trump Offers Himself as a Superman President: A curious query into meekness and the assumption that its good

One thing that really disgusts me is when I’m around other men who make the statement, “I’m not superman” as a way to let themselves off the hook for underachieving. The statement usually comes when there is great pressure to do everything and be everything to all the needs of all who require solutions. The chicken thing to do is to declare—I’m not superman, “I’m not perfect,” “I’m just a man.” I don’t think there has ever been a single day in my life from a young boy until the present where I’ve just wanted to be “just a man.” Considering the name of this site is “overmanwarrior” that should be a pretty good indication of where my sentiments reside in the context of personal expectation. So when presented with problems, no matter how many or how difficult, I always lean in to solve them all and carry whatever burdens there are—no matter what the odds. To my mind that is what is expected out of men—all men of all races and ages. It is their job and if they fall short of that attempt—I don’t think much of them. That is why I am so interested in the Donald Trump campaign. He says and expects of himself much of what I do—which is the type of person I want for president. That was never more obvious than in an early October weekend interview with Trump by CNBC’s John Harwood who declared to the presidential candidate, that America doesn’t have “superman” presidents. Trump’s response was that “You will if you have Trump for president.” Watch for yourself.

What John Harwood said was actually a mouthful—it had meanings at many levels. But most obvious is that American presidents should be expected to be supermen—otherwise no nation can expect to maintain such an exclusive status as a dominating superpower. Ordinary men with their petty weaknesses have caused enough trouble over the years, from John Kennedy’s affairs, to LBJ’s womanizing, Bill Clinton’s obsession with sexual relationships, and the Bush family meekness, if the problems in our country were to really be traced back to an origin, it comes from human beings—especially people who are supposed to be leaders, lowering the bar of their own expectations to be viewed as simple men with humble origins. Society might teach that meekness is a positive trait in Sunday school, but in reality that just gets your ass kicked intellectually and physically. Meekness invites some dominating personality—or county to step in and push you around and that mentality needs to change if America is going to survive.

Men should expect themselves to be supermen. Teddy Roosevelt with all his faults pushed himself toward greatness nearly with every breath he took, daily. One of his life goals was to kill a man which he did on San Jaun Hill with his Rough Riders. He overcame illnesses, great opposition, and even finished a speech he was giving while he was shot. He was campaigning when an assassin’s bullet penetrated his body—he knew it—yet he finished his campaign speech anyway just to show how tough he was. That was not a guy who allowed himself to be “meek.” Andrew Jackson was another such personality. Over his lifetime he survived many duels and carried with him all his life an expectation toward a rough and ready approach to just about everything. It was because of Jackson that the United States currently has Florida, Texas and had a paid off debt during his time in office. Thomas Jefferson was another personality who expected of himself not great physical strength, but incredible intellectual strength. It was because of him that we have the Marines when he put together a force to go and fight the Barbary Pirates. I would expect every American president to exhibit similar behavior. Even though those presidents were far from perfect, they at least made attempts during their lives to be more than ordinary. They certainly tried and had personal expectations of greatness.

During westward expansion many men challenged themselves against fate for the potential of fortune. Most failed, but a few rose to the top and became larger than life characters largely on the backs of their personal bravado. Doc Holiday was one of those gun fighting characters that took a debilitating illness and pushed himself beyond the limits of fear to something he otherwise would not otherwise become as a gentleman gambler. Many don’t know it but likely the real inspiration for the Lone Ranger western character was a man named Bass Reeves. He was a black lawman who was obsessed with living with honor and a sense of justice for the innocent. The westward expansion period was an exciting time because there did emerge strong personalities that pushed themselves toward superhuman expectations, Jessie James was one, Wild Bill Hickok was another. After World War II many westerns were made in the movie business and on television that embodied something of an overman mindset, where men tried to live under a system of honor to protect their families and friends with a superhuman courage. John Wayne and Clint Eastwood built their careers around embodying those traits to the movie going public. For a lot of years there was an expectation among other males that they were expected to act whenever possible as something beyond mortal when pressed.

Most males today make me sick at their lack of bravado, and now we live in a time where such superhuman expectations have been abandoned. Even among our celebrities there are no longer many who even attempt to portray a larger-than-life personality. Yet John Harwood says it so easily that we don’t elect superman presidents. When have we decided not to? What ridiculous imposition of assumption dictated that we vote for the meek, week, losers of low self-confidence emitting from the “everyman” like sweat running through the crack of a gorilla’s ass? When did weakness become such a noble quality—because at such a point the instigator should be wrung up and cast through the folds of time into a boundless existence where they can do no further harm toward the fate of humanity. No wonder so many people dislike Trump’s boastfulness. Donald Trump doesn’t sit around crying like some modern man that his goldfish died. Trump doesn’t politely pretend to be stupid so some losers can feel like they belong at the tables of greatness. Over the last few weeks there have been several examples given of past Mit Romney campaigns along with John McCain as if they were the types of presidential candidates the Republicans were looking for in 2016.   Are you kidding me? Both of those idiots lost—because they took the advice of marketers and allowed themselves to be seen as “everyman” instead of “overman.” There is nothing noble or good about the belching, farting, insecure everyman. There is nothing endearing about such a creature. The universe is laughing at them daily—we don’t want them in the White House.

Trump has no trouble sticking up his hand and declaring he’s not an “everyman.” He states emphatically without apology, that he is and would be, a superman. That’s who I want at the wheel of a “superpower” that America is supposed to be under the capitalist style of government that we have. We don’t need another meek statesman who believes himself to be just another guy in a field of team players unimportant on the cosmic stage. We’ve had plenty of presidents like that—and they haven’t done us a good job. As a result, there are not enough men in the world willing to be a superman within the sphere of their personal contacts. Ask a wife who she’d rather sleep with, a crying fool ready to throw himself at the feet of a community and sacrifice himself to their qualms, or an unapologetic superman who always has the answers and is ready in a fraction of a second at all hours of the day to take her where she wants to go? What about the child who looks up at a father and wants someone who knows best 100% of the time, or the wavering reed of indecision who declares that they are just men among men—and nothing particularly special. Then who would that kid listen to when they ask what would happen if it were discovered they smoked pot for the first time. Typically the meek dad would say, “well son, I’ve smoked it and it wasn’t very smart, but you’ll have to make up your own mind. Who am I to judge or tell you anything, I’m just a man?” Compare that to the dad who tells the kid, “if I catch you smoking pot I’ll kick your ass off this fu**ing planet you little bitch. I’ve never smoked it and only pussies smoke it because they can’t handle the pressure of this life and seek to numb their minds from the pain of reality. That makes them weak and you don’t want to be weak.” Which is the correct answer dear reader? That is why the world needs more supermen. The meek types have done enough damage to last many lifetimes—and its time to change our approach. The world needs more supermen. Wives want them in their beds, kids want them as fathers, and nations need something to encourage them to be better people. So especially in the White House, we had better learn to elect such people. Because we all need to face a high bar and stop using humanity as a crutch for laziness, and cowardly dispositions. We have tried that and it doesn’t work.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Carl Icahn’s ‘Danger Ahead’: Why Trump University failed but the billionaire would succeed as president

DOk course I daily keep up with a wide range of subjects and read heavily on them—which is quite a task if I were to think about it. It’s for no other reason than I have a lot of passion for many things. For instance, I forgot to sleep over the past weekend for both Friday and Saturday nights because there wasn’t enough time to do everything I wanted to do on those days. Sleep was not an option. But of those things I have not read lately much in the financial journals. You might remember my alarm while buying a car recently at the extremely low-interest rates. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. I have been thinking about other things, so didn’t really hear the loud voices coming from people like Carl Icahn about low-interest rates. However, as a Trump supporter for president, I did notice the Icahn had endorsed Trump and his tax package for reasons that I had noted centering on interest rates. Icahn is one of the most respected investors in the world so I felt a little pride at recognizing something that he was uttering which should concern every American immensely. Icahn put his thoughts together in a video called Danger Ahead that should explicitly encourage people to favor Donald Trump. The situation is dire and requires immediate attention. I’ve been warning about this phase in the American economy for a long time, but now that it’s here, we have to take action to solve the problem as we are well beyond the point of no return.

Icahn has done several such videos and doesn’t just stop on the corporate inversion concerns mixed with extremely low-interest rates. He goes further and addresses the other major crises present in America, which is so grossly obvious in politics and in business—our society has lost the quality of its people to do basic business. As a supporter of unfettered capitalism, the only way to keep everything in reasonable check is for people to function from a distinct cultural morality. For instance, as Icahn points out, many of today’s CEOs, and Board of Directors along with hedge fund investors are morally bankrupt so they invite snake oil salesman in the form of politicians to induce unneeded regulation on economic matters further restricting the free flow of financial expansion. Icahn has specifically pointed to a particularly low quality breed of manager class that has emerged in America which is proving to be catastrophic to our ability to deal with the financial crises that is coming.

To be a good manager a person has to function from a general foundation of ethical behavior. If a manager has hidden deep within their psychosis insecurities and didactic desires, they are likely unequipped to be good managers. Even worse, in the chain-of-command structure of most American business managers are reluctant to put second-in-commands to nip at their heels challenging their authority with anybody competent. So the incompetent are often the types who find promotions. The best and the brightest are most of the time left to die in some corner of a manufacturing environment as the worst and weakest thrive. This is a trend that has been going on for a long time—so it’s nothing new. But it’s beginning to have an effect on our national GDP that is measurable.

I can say from experience that the world is dying in regard to management. It’s really bad in the United States—most people on the other end of the phone or on an email are completely incompetent for their positions. They are culturally destroyed so that they are not equipped to function in a modern business environment. Good management is becoming a serious lost art in America, but it’s not limited to our borders—it’s the world over. The primary fault of these phenomena is our education systems which have been heavily influenced by politicians who know next to nothing about money. There is serious knuckle-dragging going on in modern business, when the issue should be reversed. Considering what is spent on modern education we should have the opposite problem. So the blame is on our educations system.

There is some criticism of Donald Trump and his Trump University that was in operation during the last decade. Essentially, Trump wanted to create a new generation of business leaders with his education institution infused with his perpetual optimism. It was a failed enterprise, so many in the media are pointing toward that failure to hang on Trump the selling of false promises as if the whole thing had been a scam—and why the billionaire would be a failed president. But where Trump would succeed as president but not as the head of a university is due to the Metaphysics of Quality which I’ve talked about extensively before. CLICK TO REVIEW. Trump as a president is largely a salesman for all things Americana whereas institutional learning cannot teach people to think from the front of the train of thought. Leaders are a special breed. As president, Trump can help create an environment for leaders to emerge, but education institutions cannot make poor managers into good forward thinking people. It just doesn’t work for the masses. Trump tried, but not everyone was ready for the effort of leadership, and this is what’s essentially wrong with all education institutions—even ones infused with optimism of Donald Trump. It takes great leadership to create good managers, and leadership is not the criteria used to invoke promotions. Instead, we have created a system of brown-nosing and schmoozing to accomplish promotions—and that doesn’t automatically create leaders. Leadership cannot be bought with the price of tuition, it has to emerge from within individuals who have value and know how to spot it in others.

Trump and Icahn are free to say what they think because they are rich. They don’t have to worry about making anybody above them angry with their opinions—which most smart people in the world are very concerned about—because their upward mobility depends on it. If they show up their boss—who may well be an incompetent loser, they may not be able to buy that house next year, or a new car. I’ve had the opportunity to do a lot of hiring over the years and a common question I ask of new employees is how hungry they are to perform the task they are being hired for. I say to them that I expect them to challenge me for my job—that I want them to bring their best to the game table. I don’t want ass-kissers, or appeasers of any kind. I want people who will challenge themselves every day and look beyond me for their opportunity. I never worry about somebody down talking me to someone else because my reputation speaks for itself. All people who are involved in management should feel that way. But they don’t. They watch with fearful eyes always over their shoulders worried that somebody might notice that they are incompetent—because they have been taught that having faults and being not so good at things was a virtue rather than a detriment that it truly is. Trump and Icahn at their senior ages can afford to be critical. They may not have felt so comfortable saying these things 20 years ago, but now they are because the evidence is so grossly obvious. For the record though, I have always said these types of things, so it’s nice to see others joining the party especially people like Carl Icahn.

The net result of this present debacle is due to the failed philosophy of power within the collective instead of the value of individual merit. When Icahn says that the unions are somewhat at fault for the situation, he means that good managers have thrown up their hands and tossed the meat to the dogs instead of sticking around to fight it out. Those who do tend to stick around these days are the suck asses and losers who are more interested in titles than in the merit of their positions. As low quality people, they look toward the position of their office for social value leaving them little intellectually to provide the masses by way of leadership. So America has destroyed one of its valued commodities—the breeding of good hard-nosed leaders of which people like Trump and Icahn are a dying breed. They are both looking for one last shot at fixing the world starting with America—because both are old men who I believe want to leave the earth better than when they found it. And right now, the risk is that they will leave it far worse—not because of them—but in spite of their efforts.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Communist Dreams: Shutting down the government over guns

When the anti-gun forces point to the far-right as their primary opposition to the national banning of weapons their perspective is relative to their current political positions which are essentially the type of communists that founded the U.S.S.R. They call themselves progressives now instead of communists but their message and strategy are extremely similar to the turn-of-the-century communists that seized Europe prior to World War II. In America to avoid the communist stigma they changed their name to progressive and are seeking to implement the type of centralized control that is common under communist regimes. So let’s get that little disclaimer out-of-the-way before proceeding.   When they speak with hatred at the “far right” they mean capitalists, traditionalists and religious conservatives—essentially the majority of the American nation. They speak the name with a bit of scorn hoping to push people down into shells of security from speaking publicly and affirming that the progressives are in fact the majority hoping to transform the nation into the semblance of a communist state. To accomplish that task the must remove guns from American culture.

In delivering the eulogy Saturday for an aide killed by a stray bullet on a New York City street, Gov. Andrew Cuomo stepped up his calls for national gun control toward the progressive aim of accomplishing that task by saying:

“If the far right is willing to shut down the government because they don’t get a tax cut for the rich, then our people should have the same resolve and threaten to shut down the government if they don’t get a real gun control law to stop killing of their innocents,” he said.

http://www.guns.com/2015/09/28/cuomo-calls-for-government-shut-down-over-gun-control/

You see how this works dear reader. If Republicans were not trying to do the responsible thing and shut down the government because of extremely irresponsible spending at the federal level, by both sides of the House and Senate, then progressives would be shutting it down for the same radicalism only from the political left’s position. Aside from the threat of shutting down the portions of the government because the bill for it is simply too high amok with inefficiencies, the services rendered are constantly and forever going to be used to extort action from one side or the other. So it would be best to get used to not wanting those services so that they can’t be used to force action upon the voting public. Government shut downs are a responsible action. It is irresponsible of the government to use National Parks as extortion pieces to hurt travelers from visiting national treasures and refusing local law enforcement help to keep those parks open, as they did during the last government shut down—of which the Republicans were supposedly blamed, but still managed to take control of the House and Senate. The American public supported Republican efforts in spite of what progressives said of the action in the media.

And now here is Andrew Cuomo attempting to use tragedy to advance a progressive agenda obsessed with gun control—and thereby control over the public at large as a centralized authority. The purpose of guns in America is to protect private property either from individual theft, or governments out of control if the terrible should ever take place and the courts fail completely—as they presently are near in status. There are occasionally tests by the government of their authority against people they consider radical gun-nuts, and gun fights do sometimes erupt—but the threat of violence currently keeps government at bay in all but the most extreme cases. To put things simply, guns are intended to keep activist progressives like Andrew Cuomo from spreading like a disease across the nation as an activist politician allowing government to seize private property for the purpose of extorting its use back to us—such as what happens when there is government shut downs. The National Parks are shut down to hurt the people who want to use them.   The federal government is essentially fighting for the right to purposely mismanage their assignments for the sole propose of maintaining control to advance progressive strategies which almost always involve over spending on federal budgets for causes that are anti-traditional in American value.

There are many of us on the “far right” who are looking around and wondering where our country went—and we don’t like it. Every day there is more legislation created by nut-cases like Andrew Cuomo for the purpose of advancing progressive strategies—and there is always money attached to them. For Cuomo and his kind, removing guns from society is the ultimate dream because they would no longer have to fear imposing their desires as a collective parasite upon the free people of America. They don’t think anything of using every tragedy from lives lost toward that objective because they don’t see value in individuals—but only if they can use them to build a collective sentiment toward mass disregard for a particular topic they are against—in this case guns.

These same tricksters will give a eulogy for a fallen victim on one afternoon then turn right around and defend the mass murder of millions of babies to abortion under the same breath. Their purpose is the spread of evil upon the earth as communists—their brethren from the past. And to continue that spread, they require the removal of guns from society so that there is no defense to protect that majority “far right” within America from the aggressive intentions of the typical progressive. The undercurrent of Andrew Cuomo is aggression through the disguise of peace. Progressives have no problem assaulting individuals so long as the can bring peace to the “greater good” as defined by them. Pacifists who surrender to the authority of the state, in the mind of the progressive, are the ways forward to a society’s desire for justice. But that definition is strictly one from the “far left.” The “far right” and the “far left” are a long way off. Andrew Cuomo is a long way away from someone like me in regard to political philosophy. One philosophy is built by the values of something like the Rocky Horror Picture Show, while mine might be built by years of John Wayne movies. The values are not compatible and it is not going to be possible to convince me to surrender my sanctity to the big government efforts of the Andrew Cuomo’s progressive mentality. Frustrations will abound. When the government shuts down due to political battles—I’m happy because I don’t want to pay for a lot of the offerings that the government provides. I don’t want them in charge of National Parks; I don’t want them in our schools, or in the typical government positions that are so common in the Beltway culture.   However, when those methods of politics fail and progressives still haven’t obtained their true objective, they must turn to force as the last resort. And when they do, they have to know and respect that the American guns of private ownership are there to meet their insurrection.   That is what the real issue behind Cuomo’s utterance. If Republicans didn’t threaten to shut down the government Democrats would try the same but for different reasons. That is a fact we all better get used to because government spending is too high and there is no way to slow it down now without pain. When politicians realize that they can’t live with that pain they will turn to force—and when they do, we better have plenty of guns in as many homes as possible. Because there is no other recourse when legislative justice breaks down due to political idealism—the only way to stay free is through gun ownership. It is the key to American civilization, and it needs to be less stringent instead of more so.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

 

Why You Should Vote for Donald Trump: The historic Oklahoma State Fair Speech of 2015

This speech at the Oklahoma State Fair on September 25, 2015 is why I’m supporting Donald Trump for president. If you were smart dear reader, you would too. This speech exemplifies why Donald Trump is the best candidate in the last century for president of the United States. When Trump is under the most fire, he gets better. He thrives under the heat of pressure. The worse a situation is, the better he is. With all the controversy he’s endured since the last debate most candidates in his position would have a tendency to run scared. After all, as of this writing Trump is in a feud with Fox News, Glenn Beck daily slams his candidacy and many other establishment Republicans are on a full court press to dump Trump from being a threat to the Republican ticket. But in spite of all that—Trump is at his best under adversity. Watch this speech.

People who function best under stress are extremely rare, and Donald Trump is one of those people. Punch his ticket and jump on for the ride. Because people like him are not about politics, it’s about quality. He is precisely what is needed in a 2016 White House. His Oklahoma speech with no notes, wonderful enthusiasm and rhetorical debate answering directly the criticism of the past week is a work of political art. You should watch it and make sure a friend sees it as well. This is history in the making and you’ll want to participate.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Boehner Crying over the Pope: Why there is supposed to be a separation between church and state

As many conservatives like Glenn Beck strive to bring God back into the political realm grounding the roots of patriotism, the Pope Francis visit to the United States should serve as a warning shot as to why in America we should keep a clear distinction between the separation of church and state. Obama and others like him who would love to empower the United Nations into being a ruling centralized authority throughout the world, is using the Pope to advance their progressive agenda—particularly the religion of global warming and immigration. I’m not Catholic; I don’t recognize the pope in any position of authority. If he were standing on the other side of a fence, I wouldn’t even take the time to gaze over at him. To me, he’s just another old man. I’m sure he’s a nice guy. I like that the church tries to help people with kindness—that’s a sweet thing to do as a human being. But I don’t need the pope addressing my congressional body of government from the vantage point of a religious figure from Italy who was born in Argentina and thinks socialism is more favorable than capitalism. Standing in front of my country’s government and lecturing us about the depravity of capitalism is like stepping into a hamburger restaurant and demanding that it become a Chinese buffet and should serve more items for vegans. It’s just disrespectful.

Even more disturbing is that John Boehner, my congressman in my district who happens to be Speaker of the House cried about meeting the pope. That is not very wise for a leader of Congress. Such behavior establishes that the Roman Catholic Church holds sway over the leadership of our republic, and that’s no crying matter. It’s embarrassing. No man should be crying over meeting another man—especially one like Francis. The celebrity of the pope is a completely made up thing, no different from Lady Gaga. There is nothing Holy about the guy other than an institutional organization decided to make him the leader of their church. The reaction that many have had toward the pope’s visit to the United States—summarized best by John Boehner is that philosophically, entirely too many people are wrong in their foundation beliefs and rely on the church to provide their spiritual essence—which is dangerous. It’s dangerous for individuals, it is dreadfully treacherous for an entire nation.

My article yesterday about the mysterious Serpent Mound was actually written to set up this point, CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. Religion is a poor philosophic foundation for anything intended to get to the facts. A proper philosophy is one established on proven observation, not one based on faith. If the pope can sell the idea of sacrifice in the here and now for the benefit of an afterlife, he can also convince people that global warming is real, and that poor productive lifestyles are not the cause of poverty. Otherwise rational men and women who conduct their lives in the world of the real put all that on hold on Sunday when they attend a Catholic service and give idolatry to this dude from Argentina that the Vatican in Italy calls a pope. A proper understanding of history reveals that religion is much older than the Roman Catholic Church and that because of the modern doctrines established only in the last 1800 years, a proper understanding of our real history is not possible. There is nothing to cheer about for a pope. If people will believe what he says there is no reason to not believe in some of the ancient alien contemplations about the start of the civilization—that earth was seeded by extraterrestrials, the planet was terraformed by an artificial moon, and interdimensial rulers from the far reaches of the universe are the true kings of our lives as ultraterrestrials. After all, if you’re going to believe in a burning bush, resurrection after death on the third day, and making the blind see—why not.

That is why it’s so upsetting to see grown men cry and pander to some guy walking around in an archaic costume from the Middle-Ages called a pope. I’ll be the first to say that I’d rather deal with people who have religious values than no values at all, but those most committed to faith have an extremely difficult time deciphering things through logic.  Once Pandor’s Box is opened and some blind faith is accepted to the human mind, there is no turning it off. If a person is willing to look at the pope and accept that he’s the embodiment of god on earth, then that person is no different from the countless societies from the past that have failed, from the ancient Egyptians to the Aztecs. The ability to worship a deity does not make a society great. The values often associated with religion sometimes do, such as the Judeo-Christian background that established America. But the Founding Fathers were wise enough to understand that there should be a separation of church and state so that an emphasis on logic could be established. Blind faith is no way to run a government, or make any decisions, so it is reprehensible that the symbol of blind faith would even fathom to lecture Congress about what types of things America should or should not value. Some of the Founding Fathers did attempt to put God in the government, such as the symbols that appear on American money—“In God We Trust.” It doesn’t say what god, it just references a deity. With hindsight being 20/20 it would have been best to never have muddied the water of confusing religion with the state and to stick with the original thought of separation. Because you can’t go down that road of belief and faith and still expect to make decisions based on rational evidence. The two things just aren’t compatible, as much as we’d like them to be.

That’s why if feels wrong to see John Boehner crying over the pope. He’s supposed to be the third most powerful person in the world—and he’s crying over the uttering of an old man because the figure represents the embodiment of godliness upon the earth. For a grown man in a leadership position to believe such a thing is a tragic display of faith instead of leadership. The human race has done a poor job of establishing a criterion for leadership largely because the values of its historic religions have idolized pacifists and sacrificial souls toward the fate of the universe, instead of relying on the miracle of thought.

For those who think human beings are insignificant in the universe consider that animals don’t think—not in the way that we associate thought to. Their activity is to maintain their life, they eat, drink, and reproduce maintaining a cycle of life that is specific to their species. Human children begin thinking very young when they begin playing with toys. With cats, dogs and other animals, they play with toys also, but the activity is largely connected to learning hunting techniques that will be valuable to them with muscle memory latter in their adult lives. Human children however play and daydream and play out fantasy events in their heads with an alternate reality that is very specific to human thought. Single cell organisms that might be found on some distant planet or at the bottom of the ocean don’t do that. They just live—they don’t do much thinking. Humans are remarkable because of their ability to think. Congress, the building that the pope spoke in, the President of the United States, and all the aspects of American culture that the pope saw on his trip are aspects of human thought—whereas in Cuba where the pope had visited the day before, the cost of not thinking was grotesquely obvious. God doesn’t help the people in Cuba with some miracle. America does with capitalism and the thoughts generated by the measurement of money have made society much better. The pope falsely associates the worship of money and a growing gulf between the rich and the poor based on Biblical text nurtured along by a crumbling Roman empire—so his premise and the assumption arrived at are wrong. Money is a measurement of productivity—of action. It’s not something given to people—it’s something that is created by value. When the political left tries to establish a life without values—and they fail, then seek to rob those values from a church that does have them—using the pope to justify every transsexual-homosexual act, abortion, and every chemical addiction known to man—they are trying to disguise their bankrupt philosophy. That’s why Obama made such a big deal about the pope’s visit as opposed to the Israeli prime minister who visited recently—that he gave the cold shoulder to completely during Netanyahu’s stay.

But to see John Boehner crying–it’s just sick. Even if the moment was an emotional one, he should be stoic enough as a world leader to hold it together. The pope has no authority in America and we certainly don’t want to go back to the inquisition of the Dark Ages. We don’t need the Crusades either. We don’t need global conquest under the flag of an old church that promotes Argentinean socialists into the white robes of piety. The pope should be asking America questions about how to live, not lecturing it. Because when it comes to moral positioning, America and its capitalism does more for more people than the church in the Vatican could ever hope to achieve. It all comes from human thought that is specific to the human race. The logic of nature and all the global warming that the pope advocated for before Congress is simply a demolition derby of primal chaos where millions of species of animals, plants and airborne bacteria are in a fight to survive from day-to-day. Of all them are human beings—the only species who can think. And when it comes to worshiping a pope, it’s a thoughtless enterprise more adapt to a primal animal, not a human being. The Speaker of the House should understand that America is a place for thought, and not a platform for lecture by a man and his church that just doesn’t understand its place in the universe—but by the definitions of a fallen empire and a Europe that still hopes to use the church to rule the world.

Before the pope could leave the United States after his trip Boehner so emotional over his visit quit Congress singing a famous melody from the Disney classic Song of the South.  The heat of the day proved to be too much for him, so he got out of the kitchen.   Many of us knew all along that he didn’t have what it took, that the position of Speaker required more than just pageantry.  And from his perspective realizing that when the pope left the podium as tears streamed down his face it was time to throw in the towel.  Because the fight coming to Congress is just getting started, and he obviously didn’t  have the heart for it.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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The Great Mystery of Adams County: Terror, death, and government conspiracy from beyond the fourth dimension

In a lot of ways the deeply mysterious is the key to understanding the profoundly obvious. To the lazy mind, such things are often regulated to the realm of conspiracy. But experience and a truly inquisitive mind points steadily to a deeply flowing current of activity that our mainstream thought refuses to acknowledge. In Ohio, near my home relatively speaking this was never truer than the effigy Serpent Mound in Adams County, Ohio where I go often just for the enjoyment of the experience. GE has a major engine testing facility in the rolling hills of Peebles which is just a few miles from the mound. My wife and I on several occasions visit the McDonald’s in Peebles for a Big Mac and an ice cream. The area fascinates me not only for the strange mound left by a forgotten people. Archaeologists claim the mound was built by the Adena, but more likely those hunters and gathering tribes of Indians were a secondary culture to the primary which had vacated the area. They built the Serpent Mound, along with the countless other effigies around Ohio by a mysterious culture obsessed with the events in the sky.

Most people don’t see the great mysteries of the earth and the hidden history of mankind because the religious lenses they view life with prevents such insight. Before they can admit the vast evidence of discrepancy to their minds, they must look beyond the text of their religious doctrine.   Since politics and science are often connected by grant money, those two fields often function as a religion, where belief takes prescience over fact. Among those facts is that the Vikings were a much more advanced culture than previously thought. Their knowledge of global sea lanes provoked them to expand well beyond their northern borders to conquer lands far away. They settled in America much earlier than Columbus which is generally accepted today and brought with them a mound building culture that was quite prolific in all the north regions of Ireland, England and of course Norway among many others. There were also giants in North America, probably along the lines of the biblical Goliath. When we say giants, we mean people who were comparable to today’s NBA players. They were in some cases eight feet or more in height, but they weren’t Jack and the Beanstalk large. But they were giants compared to the relatively small Adena Indian. There were also Chinese in the Americas well before Columbus, and should be given credit for discovering America—officially. The Native American Indians were a second-hand culture that played out the Vico Cycle as predicted and were part of a declining civilization—where their mythologies were all that was left of that previously advanced culture. Ohio was clearly settled by a combination of all these elements. The people of the mound building cultures were obviously trading and had influence with early Mesopotamian societies and applied that knowledge directly to the Ohio effigy mounds through mathematics seen in many of those pre-historic monuments.

Without question many effigy mounds in Ohio were destroyed during frontier expansion and farming. Many were destroyed to preserve religious belief. Others were destroyed to keep grant money flowing to dig sites as the government had a vested interest in preserving its view of history for the sake of its own justification. But Serpent Mound in Adams County is ground central to the strange and weird still. It is within regional proximity of the mysterious Mothman Prophecies as chronicled by the reporter John Keel and is close to the very strange things that always seem to happen in the eastern portion of the state. Many don’t know it, but Bigfoot sightings are quite common in Ohio, as well as crop circles. To avoid appearing kooky, the media doesn’t report them all, but they are quite common in Ohio. And its been known that crop circles appear across the street from Serpent Mound from time to time in a similar way that they appear at Stonehenge in England. What is most mysterious to me about the site is not necessarily who built it, or why. Even by today’s standards of transportation, it is a remote site. So why would anybody decide to build such a thing in that Adams County location? It’s not near a major waterway, or known animal hunting ground. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s a lot of effort for a randomly picked site.

Indians are upset that the dialogue is changing about their heritage in America. They are losing, quite by good reason, their “native” designation. Politicians are still stuck on the term, but the evidence is pointing toward them as a secondary culture built by a long gone primary in much the way that today’s poor inhabit the regions and homes of areas that once prospered. Enterprising people build things; secondary people live off the efforts of others—and clearly this was the case with the Indians who encountered Columbus and the European migrants. So they resent that UFO theories and Ancient Alien researchers are thinking of Serpent Mound as evidence of some extraterrestrial influence. They wish it to remain an archaeological site as part of their native heritage. But Serpent Mound is just too precise to be the work of a nomadic culture. It had a purpose in much the way that the Nework Mounds outside of Columbus did—very purposeful in astronomical significance and built by a culture with much more in common with ancient Sumerian than some African hunter tribe. Much of the evidence there has been destroyed by construction. But at Serpent Mound, there is purity to the place still evident by the lack of social noise. And the place is clearly the result of a high intelligence that does not show up in our history books. The primary culprit is not what is evident on the ground, but what’s underneath. The Serpent Mound location is located on a plateau with a unique cryptoexplosion structure that contains faulted and folded bedrock, usually produced either by a meteorite or a volcanic explosion. In 2003 geologists from Ohio State government and the University of Glasgow (Scotland) concluded that a meteorite strike was responsible for the formation. They had studied core samples collected at the site in the 1970s. Further analyses of the rock core samples indicated the meteorite impact occurred during the Permian Period, about 248 to 286 million years ago.[17]

This site is one of the few places in North America where such an occurrence can be seen. While some scholars speculate that prehistoric Native Americans may have placed the mound in relation to this geological anomaly, others think there was nothing visible at ground level that would have captured their attention. Yet, Serpent Mound was built right in the midst of this strange geological formation. Crop circles, strange cyrptoexplosions, and advanced knowledge of astronomy are what is typical at Serpent mound but why? Then this strange story a few years ago came about:

Ohioans were dazzled by a bright flash of blue light in the night sky on September 27, 2013, in southern Ohio around 11:30 p.m., Eastern Standard Time. Could it have been a meteorite or a satellite predicted to crash to earth on Friday?

A fireball reportedly hit near a home in northern Adams County, Ohio, a few miles outside the city of Peebles causing a house fire. Those reports are unconfirmed. The six alarm fire left fireman battling the blaze into the early hours of the morning. It is unknown at this time if the residents made it out safely.

A neighbor said the meteor crossed over the city and hit near the Locust Grove Cemetery just four miles from the Great Serpent Effigy Mound. In recent years, a crop circle appeared overnight in an adjacent field from the Serpent Mound grounds and thousands of years ago it was the sight of a major meteorite that caused a huge impact crater.

Update 1: As of the morning of September 28, 2013, a home outside of Peebles, Ohio, in the Locust Grove area of Adams County burned to the ground last night, the two residents of the home, an elderly couple, Jane and Lyle Lambert, as a result of smoke inhalation. The fire is believed to be caused from the meteor or pieces of the heated meteor that hit the home. The state fire marshal is investigating the fire.

Update 2: As of October 14, 2013, the cause of the fire that burnt down the home of Lyle and Jane Lambert is yet to be determined. Speaking to a neighbor of the couple who wishes to remain anonymous on October 10, 2013, says that NASA employees were to visit and inspect the location, however; due to the recent government shutdown that is not going to happen. There is no impact crater and impact of any fragments on the house cannot be confirmed or denied due to the house being a total loss.

http://www.examiner.com/article/was-it-a-meteor-that-lit-up-the-sky-last-night

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

The problem with human beings is that they assume that their four-dimensional world is all there is—length, width, height, and time. But there are more dimensional existences than those which our civilization is just beginning to grasp. Crop circles, ancient effigies, and astronomical alignments calibrated to equinoxes and other events in the sky appear more and more to be markers in time for reference. For instance, when you read a book, it is customary to place a marker between the pages for reference later when reading can resume—as it often takes time to read a book. While reading a book life is experienced in a very liner fashion, but if one wanted to they could scan ahead and read the end, or go back to the beginning for further reference. The strange things that happen around some places around the globe, like Serpent Mound appear to have a quality that serves a function close to a book mark in the context of time. Some locations have more relevance than others indicating that for inter-dimensional travel, quadrants about the earth have importance over others. Whatever it was that hit the house in 2013 lit up the sky even as far away as my location in Hamilton, Ohio yet nobody discussed it much the next day. I didn’t know until I did some looking around that a couple of people died as a result of the strike. But what was more mysterious was that out of all the places on earth that the event took place, it was at the Serpent Mound, where so much other activity has taken place.

Something is important about Serpent Mound, Ohio. It may not be obvious to our four-dimensional eyes, but the evidence sometimes left behind is quite obvious. A couple was killed in their home by a mysterious object hitting them in the middle of the night. 250 million years ago a strange object of some massive density punctured the earth’s crust from either within or without—or perhaps both at the same time. But it wasn’t a simple meteor strike. In linear time, 250 million years to the present is a long time, but to inter-dimensional time, it could be an instant. A crop circle may be just a thumb print in a book to hold one’s place—we really don’t know. But isn’t it convenient that NASA wasn’t available to investigate the impact site in 2013 where two people lost their lives to an object that apparently fell out of the sky near one of the greatest effigy monuments in the world? What was the excuse—a government shut-down—so the investigation was called off. There is never an official investigation of these types of things for many of the same reasons.

Government puts itself in charge of all things extraterrestrial, or even ultra-dimensional, yet they are proven time and again to be incompetent to perform the task. The rest of us are left to wonder based on the evidence what’s going on—because something is. So we’re all left grabbing at straws in the dark. But we do it because we know that the straw is there—somewhere. It’s just being hidden from us by our education systems and a government trying to maintain control of the real truth, which is getting harder and harder for them to maintain.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Meaning of Trump Tower: Dealing with the most important aspect of the 2016 election

For me, the most significant revelation of the now famous Trump town hall meeting that caused so much controversy was not the Muslim comments which soaked up all the news, it was the announcement that the billionaire would refuse to draw a salary as President. He’s rich, he makes over $400 million per year in a salary anyway, so what does he need a few hundred thousand more dollars for? Most people in congress, the senate, or even the current president, a six figure salary is a tremendous appeal to receive as a public servant. But to a guy like Trump, such a salary is nothing—literally. This puts Trump in an entirely different category as a presidential contender. I want a person in the White House who could care less about what he gets from the office, and who has the potential to bring to the table the kind of mentality where even millions of dollars is no problem to generate. The number one problem in America right now is no other issue but the health and potential of the economy. That has to be fixed before any other issue is tackled. If people have money in their pocket, their morality becomes much more robust—and society improves dramatically. Nothing else matters more than the money coming in and going out of the United States. With that in mind, Trump is the only option and his attitude toward the salary of the office is a perfect affirmation of that assumption.

More stunning is that the media is so desperately keen to talk about everything BUT the economy. And more and more, I see Trump getting pulled into the vortex of commonality which is so represented by those who make up the collective body of the media. Arguing with Carly Fiorina over business experience when she was terminated by a board of directors simply isn’t a comparison when it comes to Trump. Like Trump or hate him for his bombastic style, nobody can take away his vast success in the real estate market. Some failed casinos in Atlantic City and a few other places do nothing to quell the massive success Trump had in building Trump Tower at a time in his life when it was quite a large gamble. With all that was against him, he managed where many, many others would have failed. Trump Tower is in fact a President Trump’s greatest resume highlight. He should force everyone to focus on that because when he gets in these petty squibs with average people, he diminishes him and is accomplishments to something equal with a Fiorina or a Rubio—an average person trying to get into an extraordinary office where a six figure salary has some meaning.

Trump has always been above the fray, and that’s where he should stay. He’s not a politician so he doesn’t need to do politician things. If he gives stump speeches, he doesn’t need to pretend to know every Arab in the world by name, or recite the Chinese alphabet. All he needs to do is be Trump and force the world to look at his marvelous tower in Midtown and comprehend that building such a thing is greater than building just about anything in the world. It’s not like Trump Tower was built by a whole bunch of people in a corporation, it was built literally by him for his own use. That is very important–one individual man was able to garner together the resources all by himself to build the tower.

Now of course Trump didn’t actually build the tower, it took teams of people from all walks of life to make it happen, but Trump was undeniably in charge. It’s an example of what he would be able to do if given all the resources of the United States at his back. The possibilities are really unlimited when it comes to him. With his energy and ability to pull people together, he really is the best option there is out there.

Of his debate performance, it should be interesting to note that he was able to turn extreme negatives around on that stage and to get rivals to high-five him with sheer magnetism. That’s not a skill that the media understands, but then again, nobody in the media could have built Trump Tower. In negotiations you always hit hard to feel out an opponent, and then once you have them, it’s OK to be nice and to build an alliance. That’s the way negotiations work. But it takes a powerful personality to come out on top of that exchange, and up to this point, Trump really hasn’t exploited that skill. He’s been trying to mold himself to the political establishment instead of playing the game his way.

Trump has a chance to redefine the whole political process, including setting a very high bar in not taking any public money for his work. What does Trump and his wife gain by living in the White House? For Barack Obama, it’s like moving into a palace. But Trump lives in Trump Tower—and it’s a lot nicer than the White House. There is nothing for Trump in Washington. All he gets out of the deal is a chance to create and build with the nation’s resources. He could build walls, roads, and revive the economy I think pretty easily whereas everyone else would struggle to do just one thing. For Trump, I think he could be president for 8 years effortlessly building the nation back into a powerhouse—and I think at the end of it he would have lots of bipartisan support.

Trump is a doer, so it’s hard for him to articulate to a bunch of know-nothings why he is so skilled. It is a case of the Metaphysics of Quality where Trump is at the front of the train and everyone else is clearly in the back, and presidential debates, even polling is taken from the back. Trump is and has always been on the cutting edge, whether its real estate, WWE wrestling, or golf courses, he built his wealth the old-fashioned way and that is precisely what America needs to solve the economic issues.

I get invited almost every day to some business seminar on how to improve investments, how to hire the right kind of people and how to increase yield and profit margins. The sad reality to those classes is that there is nothing any of those people can teach me. I could teach them, but they have nothing they can teach me. So I stopped going to them years ago. When it comes to hiring and finding the right people for a job, I’m really good at it. I can often read things about people just by the way they walk down the street, so it is easy for me to fill job openings with a raw instinct that nobody can teach in any class, anywhere. Trump has that same instinct and he knows that the secret of management is not in doing the work himself, but in putting the right people in place to do the work for him. That’s the essential core of what a President of the United States is supposed to be doing. But Trump can’t explain any of that to the media, just as I couldn’t. People who live in the back of the train don’t and will never understand—until they come up to the front.

Trump Tower is an American representation of what happens at the front of the train, when s superior manager is left in charge of their wildest imagination. When resources are plentiful there is no limit to what they can do. The Trump presidency is not something that can be summed up by a Muslim comment, or an emphasis on women’s empowerment, or even a political party. His is an opportunity to have something that nobody has ever been able to see before. He doesn’t need to get mad at Fox News or anybody else—he’s Trump and his tower is just a physical manifestation of what the power of imagination, hard work and an indomitable spirit can achieve when it’s unleashed. And really, Trump should be president just because of that one accomplishment. He’d be crazy not to more fully utilize it.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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GMC and a Wife Hard to Please: A financial warning triggered by low interest rates

For a long time my wife and I have missed our old Jeep Grand Cherokee. She lost it in 2005 to an accident where the airbags went off during a wreck actually induced by the Lakota school system’s cut of busing during a levy fight. There were too many people on the road at Lakota East and my wife was driving our children to school. It was wet out and there was an accident. The Jeep held up wonderfully. Hardly any physical damage to the vehicle—but the airbags did deploy and that put the cost of repair well over the price of the Jeep’s worth. So it was totaled and wasn’t worth covering the extra cost to repair ourselves. We had the Jeep for a long time, and it was time to get a new car anyway. We picked up a Chrysler Town and Country which was perfect for us, and our large family. We drove it everywhere for the last ten years. We tend to buy vehicles and keep them for a long time. We don’t lease throwaway cars. We buy to keep, and we take care of them when we get them. So it’s a big deal in our family to make a car purchase. But its time again for my wife to have a new car and she is really, really, really picky. Let me emphasize, she is very hard to please. She has very specific tastes that are hard to satisfy. Her standards are extremely high. Picking out a car with her is very difficult.

I had been looking at buying a GMC Yukon Denali myself with the extended back and showed them to her, but she wasn’t going for it. They are just too big for her. She wanted a Jeep, but now that they are owned by Fiat she wants nothing to do with them. Additionally we loved our Town and Country but after Fiat acquired Chrysler that was the end of having any possibility of buying a Chrysler or Jeep. My wife may be an old country club girl, but she is probably more patriotic than I am when it comes down to it, and she doesn’t want to pay good money for foreign cars. Her very first car was a BMW. We had a Toyota Camry once, back when she was in college, but she resented having an Asian car, so since then it’s always been American cars—which I personally think are too expensive due to the labor unions and short-cuts that are often made to compete with foreign markets. I didn’t want to look at any General Motors cars because of the bailout in 2009, and Ford wasn’t making anything all that great in my opinion. They weren’t dynamic enough for us. So shopping for a car was hard for us. She didn’t want to look at any of the Mercedes products, which I tried to bring up—because she didn’t want to support German manufacturers over American even though I think they have the edge in engineering presently. But my attitude softened as I started looking into the new Yukons. On that car GMC was starting to build a good reputation again, and I was impressed.

My wife refused to drive a Yukon so we gave up on the discussion as we were at an impasse. What I didn’t know was that she started to consider the smaller versions of the Yukon on the GMC line and found that she loved the Terrain quite a lot. I was aghast because I thought the car was too small, but knowing she had done a lot of homework, and how hard she was to please, I gave it a shot—reluctantly. After all, we weren’t buying for me, it was for her. We went down to Fiehrer Motors at Bridgewater Falls to let her sell me on the merits of the GMC Terrain and I walked away rather impressed. The only drawback for me was that the Terrain wasn’t a Yukon, which wasn’t fair to the Terrain. After driving them around and looking at all the options it was clear why she liked the vehicle, it reminded us of our old Jeep, and it was made by an American company trying to give birth to itself once again—and the front end of it was smashing cool. Inside there was a lot of room and it’s technically quite a leap forward in engineering development. I was impressed with the 6 speed transmission that actually has the ability to go manual if needed, so she sold me on it and we bought one.

But this article is not about buying a new car or reviewing the GMC Terrain. It’s about a revelation I had while going through finance and signing all the paperwork. Buying a car is a very important part of the American economy, so I pay attention to aspects of it that measure the greater aspect of national GDP. I enjoyed greatly my experience at Fiehrer Motors as they have been in business for three generations now—which is very unusual. They used to be on Route 4 for a long time across from the Hamilton Plaza, by the old Richard’s Pizza place. But my wife and I would never shop for a car in that type of location because it’s too busy there to think right, plus the area is surrounded by impoverished has-been homes. Not a good way to usher in an expensive car buying experience. When we have bought cars in the past, it has been at Kings Automall. We like it over there for all the reasons that we prefer that Costco over the one in Tri-County. There are fewer slack-jawed losers over on Fields Ertle, and it does matter. People who have purchasing power don’t want to hang out with people whose life goals are to buy a pack of cigarettes and win $10 on a scratch-off lottery ticket so they can buy a case of beer. It matters even if it’s not politically correct. If the new Fiehrer dealership at Bridgewater wasn’t so nice, my wife would have never convinced me to go car shopping in the first place. So we were there buying the new Terrain, the sun was out on a nice 68 degree day after a bit of rain. There was some college football on the big screen behind me in the lounge area which I enjoyed watching as we went over all the contract details. It was clean, everyone seemed professional, and it was a good productive atmosphere that was conducive to the proper exchange of money and product. The finance guy was finalizing the details and I had positioned myself so I could see his computer screen just enough to read. That’s when I asked him if he was a drug addict.

I’m not going to give away a lot of personal details especially on a purchase that costs half of a small house. I’m grateful for good terms when I can get them. I’m not complaining on an individual basis. But what I saw was alarming to me. Keep in mind that I used to do what this finance guy was doing, so I had some experience on the matter. That was over twenty years ago, and back then I even helped paint on the front window of our dealership a giant sign designed to entice people to come in and buy a car—“4% on all cars and trucks.” I remembered back then that almost nobody had credit good enough to qualify for the 4% interest rate. They usually walked out of finance at somewhere around 6% to 7% if they had really good credit. Only people with “gold” credit were able to actually get what was on the window. So here I was watching the Sooners stomp all over the Golden Hurricanes, my wife had found a car she liked, and we were getting Chick-fil-A for my grandson’s birthday on a nice fall afternoon once we were finished with buying the car. It doesn’t get any better than that—except for the interest rate that I saw on the computer screen of my finance guy. It was less than what I painted on the window of the dealership I worked at decades ago. I thought he had made a serious mistake and was trying to hide a drug addiction.

But he wasn’t on drugs, and it was a legitimate interest rate. While my wife and everyone else was happy, I wasn’t. Something was dreadfully wrong about that. Things were not alright, that interest rate should have been much higher. As we signed the paperwork, I thought about the Fed’s decision to keep interest rates where they were, which are artificially low. Sure its good for the economy, it’s good for people to spend money, but it essentially means that any investments made in bonds or other long-term holdings are not increasing encouraging investors to continue dumping money into risky stocks further flaming a volatile market. This meant that the economy was in far worse shape than anybody was willing to acknowledge, including the most conspiratorial talk show hosts on AM radio. Banks were giving away money at a very low profit to them just to get people to buy products—and that artificial stimulus was a direct correlation to the true state of our economy that is dangerously perilous.

Look people, America is about to hit $19 trillion dollars in debt, wages are stagnant, inflation is unbelievably high, and there isn’t enough GDP to stave off complete economic collapse. There is really only this next presidential election to get it right where both the House, Senate, and the Executive Branch can increase GDP, pay down the debt so the United States doesn’t choke on foreign interest rates itself, and put the country back on course again where buying cars is a routine exercise, along with many other factors of a national economy. Failure to solve this problem means there is no future. Interest rates can’t be lowered any more than they are, and if that’s not getting people out to the stores to move products, then nothing will do it. That is not a good situation.

I’m proud of GMC for getting their act together and producing a nice series of cars, particularly the Terrain. I am impressed, and it deserves a look by anybody in the car market. I am proud of Fiehrer Motors for relocating into a really nice store in a really nice area—because I otherwise wouldn’t have went car shopping—so it’s a factor in national GDP—nearly as much as interest rate shopping—for me anyway. Without their decision to move off Dixie Highway, I wouldn’t have visited them and they wouldn’t have had the opportunity to sell me a new car. I’m proud of the Sooners for playing a fun college football game that sold lots of beer and fast food options to hundreds of thousands of viewers. And I was proud to spend $100 at Chick-fil-A on food that day. These are all wonderful things for our economy. But, the bank shouldn’t have to feel like they have to give away money. They need a chance to make a profit and while some people will say that banks make enough money, profit is what they need to stay in business. And they deserve to make money on their services. Based on that interest rate, it was clear to me that they weren’t making enough. For my situation, I won’t complain. But the fact that they felt compelled to offer it makes me worry about their future. Good things aren’t always good things.

Overall, it was a fun day, but many of the things I write about became quite evident to me. I don’t always like being right, even though I am most of the time. Unfortunately, not enough people listen in time to help themselves. That is frustrating to me. For that reason my wife and I did get the subscription to XM radio. No matter what happens, we’ll have a good life and we’ll enjoy it. However, I want many others to have a taste of the good life too-which is why I put so much time into trying to teach people—if only they’d listen.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

2015 Lakota School Board Candidates: Options for management of tax payer resources

The people who run for school board, such as those at Lakota in Butler County, Ohio, should be people who truly want to save the system and make the best management decisions possible. So for this article, I’ll cover the election of 2015 for two potential school board seats in the fashion of neutrality. In my district there are four candidates, two who currently sit on the board, Julie Shaffer, whom I’ve had my share of spats with, Lynda O’Connor that I’ve supported, along with Ernest D.Gause and Tom Tran. They had a Meet the Candidates night down at my old high school building on Taylorsville Rd on the night of the big CNN debate—which was hosted by the valuable West Chester Tea Party. Refreshingly, quite a few people showed up to watch the event. However, not enough did, so a video of the candidates at that forum can be seen here:

There was some pressure on me to run for one of those spots, but as I explained to everyone who asked—I’m not a public servant type of person. I don’t really care to shake hands, when people call me who I don’t want to talk to, I like to ignore them and when I get mad at something, or someone, I like to be free to unleash my inner T-Rex on them. I don’t like being beholden to a community established set of values. Plus, I feel I’m too young to do anything like run for an office. But most of all, in regard to Lakota, I’m not a public education supporter. I think public schools should be profit based, the unions should be crushed and made illegal, and the government should be completely out of education starting with the DOE in Washington. I don’t want more money from the state to pay for higher collective bargaining agreements for the teacher’s union just so busy parents can have a free baby sitter for their children. If I ran for school board it would be to destroy the system, which isn’t necessarily the best thing for those who do support public education. I have enough respect for the republic system of government that we have to have a vigorous debate instead of imposing my personal views on the masses. So my belief is that people who want to work together to manage a good school system should run for office, and by my appraisal those are the kinds of people who are running in 2015 within the Lakota district.

This time around there aren’t a bunch of crazy lunatics, as there have been in the past running for office, so there really isn’t a downside to any of them. Julie and Lynda have I think done a good job of adapting to the tax opposition and try to avoid reckless tax increases. Listening to Julie, she has come a long way over the last four years. I don’t forget things, but I will put things aside to make a fair comment, and she is better now than the person who debated me on 700 WLW four years ago. That largely comes from experience. I personally liked the spunk of Tom Tran although I don’t think he can apply that gumption to reality on the board. He’d likely assimilate to the current culture uneventfully and be a standard vote. I did talk to Ernest Gause after the debate and was very impressed with his bright-eyed professionalism. He is a professional educator deeply committed to learning. He said some things that were obviously progressive to me and likely weren’t very conservative. But I could tell that he really cared about education. He probably deserves to be some new blood on the school board who could at least elevate some debate regarding the allocation of resources. My friend Ann Becker used to be a very pro levy, pro education type, and he reminded me of her which isn’t at all a bad thing. So there are some good choices for school board that voters have to pick from.

Due to the declining enrollment at Lakota even with the cuts in state funding, the increased tax revenue from commercial endeavors and diligent fiscal policy should prevent Lakota from seeking a tax increase from property owners for the rest of the decade. But, as I’ve said before, the current trajectory of spending and over priced government employees at well over 60K per year will put stress on logic and create the temptation to put another tax increase on the ballot by 2017. Out of all the candidates all of them sound like they’d be supportive of voting for that tax increase. The only way to avoid that is for three conservatives to make it on the board during the next election to out vote the current members. Otherwise, that fight is inevitable. For the sake of this Lakota forum, everyone was peaceful, because tax increases have not yet been put on the table. When the school board does move in that direction, then its time to take away the handshakes and glad tidings and go to war—which we will.

But it’s best to avoid war, and even better to provide good management so that unfortunate incidents in the future can be avoided in the present. And that’s what elections are all about. Of the choices, there are some promising ones, so take advantage of them, communicate with them, and let’s see where it takes us.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Seattle Education Association: Caving to communism in a progressive utopia

When politicians use the word progressive, be clear that what they are talking about is essentially Bernie Sanders socialism. They intend to “progress” society toward collective salvation to nearly a religious fervor. That’s why they don’t have any hard opinions about North Korea, China, Iran, Mexico, Cuba, Brazil, Venezuela, Greece, France or even Russia for that matter, because socialism and communism are the modes those countries are functioning under, and they want the same for the United States. That is what politicians mean by “progressive” when they indicated that society needs to “lean forward” toward it.

Clearly one of the most progressive areas of the United States is Seattle, Washington. The massive union culture of the Boeing employees contribute largely to that, and the music culture that has evolved through their garage bands were undeniably socialist in orientation. They have an actual city council person who is a socialist. It is a highly liberalized part of the country and was one of the first places to attempt a $15 per hour minimum wage for fast food workers. So they have serious issues against capitalism and are certainly as a city leaning well toward pot smoking liberalism of the most severe version of progressive. With that said, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the teacher’s union in Seattle went on strike at the start of the school year holding the tax payers to the fire until city management—which is already on the same side as the progressive labor union—buckled just to get the teachers to go back to work again. Here’s what the school employees received in the deal followed by a short report from the Seattle Times.

 Highlights of tentative 3-year contract:

Raises: 3 percent in first year; 2 percent in second; 4.5 percent in third (state cost-of-living raise is additional). More in 2017-18 for some teachers for collaboration, and eight hours of “tech pay” for all school employees.

Discipline: Half day of training on reducing disproportionate discipline for all school employees. Equity committees launched in 30 schools.

Testing: New joint union-district committee to review and recommend testing and testing schedule.

Teacher evaluations: Test scores will no longer play any role.

School day: Will be longer, but not much for students, and teachers will be paid for the additional time.

Specialist caseloads: Sets limits, which union says is a first, for physical therapists, occupational therapists, psychologists and audiologists.

Source: Seattle Education Association

After four months of negotiations, a five-day strike and one final all-night talk, the Seattle teachers union and Seattle Public Schools reached a tentative contract agreement early Tuesday, and school is scheduled to start Thursday for the city’s 53,000 students.

The Seattle Education Association’s board of directors and its elected building representatives both voted Tuesday afternoon to suspend the strike, recommending the union’s membership approve the deal. The agreement will go to a full vote of the union’s 5,000 members at a Sunday meeting.

The building-representative vote came after hours of deliberation, where cheers and fervent discussion could be heard outside a packed room at the Machinists Hall in South Seattle.

Union bargaining chair Phyllis Campano, exhausted after one hour of sleep after the marathon negotiation session, declared victory.

“Let’s be clear,” she said. “We won the fight on this contract agreement.”

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/seattle-teachers-and-district-reach-tentative-agreement/

What a bunch of communist idiots. That is exactly why education costs so much in America, and why our children are being liberalized during that institutional training. There are no rational conservatives in the process, and even if they did manage to get elected to a board seat, progressive politicians have skewed the table to always favor the labor unions. To properly negotiate a deal against labor unions you really have to be an ass, and enjoy it, because it’s tough. But with a 5 to 7 member school board, one will always be out-voted by the rest, as those who typically run for such offices are liberalized types themselves. I would argue that the best education the kids of Seattle could have had was a few more days at home as these progressive teachers went on strike for more money and power.

This strike was not about any kids. Kids were clearly used as extortion pieces to secure higher wages, lower testing expectations, and more secure livelihoods. To hell with the kids, which is what the Seattle Education Association declared when they went on strike—there’s no other way to frame the debate. It was about money at the expense of the kids for the progressive aims of further substantiation of a communist agenda spreading across the world.

However, this story is an old one. We’ve covered it many times before. We’ve covered it on radio broadcasts, many articles, public debates and anywhere that the issue has been raised. Yet in Seattle, the situation is clear, the politics are grossly progressive and the aims of the insurrection directly applicable to the region. The apparatus for political theater has a well-known cast and everyone benefited except for the kids, because a liberal education is not necessarily better than not having one at all. I would argue that children could learn far more from the popular Leap Frog devices so popular now at the local Target store than a K-12 education in a public school. Such educations are as dirty and disrespected as public libraries where everything is shared and stagnate. The value of such education is clearly deficient. As pollsters like to announce often during the presidential race of 2016, college graduates support Hillary Clinton whereas blue-collar non-college graduates generally support Donald Trump. The accusation is that highly educated types are more able to understand “higher concepts” of progressivism. But such a term is purely marketing and has no basis in reality. It could be just as argued that 16 years of liberalized education is detrimental to a conservative mind and they will leave college prepared to support progressive platform points such as gay rights, open borders, and socialist wealth redistribution. Whereas those who make their own way in life work hard from the ground up and go to bed tired each night, they don’t like to have their money stolen from them by progressives—so they vote with their wallets. The Seattle Education Association is clearly attacking the hard-working as opposed to the unionized slugs and the wealth redistribution that they most support in Seattle, so it’s no surprise that the government school union got what they wanted so quickly. There really wasn’t any opposition, just political theater that showed clearly that the children were not the priority to the teachers.

It’s a hard reality for many to realize, but the educations we all go through within the public education system is nearly worthless. It exists for these unionized teachers to mooch off of, as they provide very little of any worth for a young, inquiring mind, except a radicalized progressive education. Kids don’t learn about the value of cowboys and Indians in public school, but they sure learn how to stand in line, organize in a collective unit, and get voluminous exposure to the progressive religion of global warming. It’s hard work to unlearn all the crap we learn and for those who reject the experience, it’s easier for them. But for all, the reality couldn’t be clearer. If you support the teachers in Seattle you essentially support Bernie Sanders socialism. The people who won in that case were the socialists represented here by the Seattle Education Association. And they pulled it off because there is no free market competition for their services and it’s nearly illegal to avoid the reach of public schools. So they have a government backed monopoly on building future progressives with tax payer money and every year the price tag goes up. And nobody does anything to stop it because they are afraid of being called names for identifying the behavior what it really is—which is a diabolical socialist scheme that would make the communists of the world bulge with pride. And today in Seattle, they are.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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