Tag: philosophy

Cliffhanger’s Morality on Capitalism” Elon Musk and Han Solo–the unseen value

A few years ago I spent a good part of a summer vacation on the balcony of a condominium reading the Ayn Rand books that my son-in-law had recently bought for me—particularly her collection of essays on capitalism. For as long as I had been alive capitalism was always portrayed as evil, which I never bought into. Yet nobody ever offered any competing theory. Even my favorite character from Star Wars, Han Solo was an unfettered capitalist without any apologies provided. George Lucas by the end of the original trilogy wanted to make Han into a more compassionate person who saw the errors of his ways—and thought about others more than himself—but I never personally bought into that theory. I’ve always seen capitalism as the way to making better things from nothing and had a far superior moral platform to project goodness than the altruistic sacrificial victim of yesteryear. After all if people are asked who they like more in Star Wars, Han Solo or Luke Skywalker who do you think they’ll pick? The results are well documented—just Google it.

I spent much of that summer thinking about those books as they provided a support that was found no place else in favor of capitalism. People like Milton Freeman were before my time, Walt Disney died when I was a little kid, and John Wayne was only fondly remembered in old movies. Reagan pretended to embrace capitalism as a continuation of his spokesman job he had at GE—but there really wasn’t anybody openly defending the morality of capitalism—and there needed to be. After all, from the world that I know people like Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, and many others like them are doing far more for people than the person who sacrifices their time and energy at a soup kitchen helping the poor. While donating time is a nice thing to do for people down and out—the cause of why people are down and out in the first place is the real issue that needs to be explored—not the result. Capitalism has in it a morality which deserves a hero so that people can understand the value.

Even stories I really like, such as Robin Hood, and Zorro have in their underlying value a kind of socialism—the villains are the rich, the protagonists are the poor. Batman who is a direct evolutionary character of Zorro was like Don Diego a wealthy man who took his gained assets acquired through his family’s success and did good to fight crime.   But what always bothered me about Zorro and Batman is that they inherited their wealth; they didn’t do as Elon Musk did and make it from nothing into becoming one of the most influential people on planet earth. Without Elon Musk and Richard Branson where would the world really be? The wealth they create for the overall economy makes it even possible for people to donate their time to a soup kitchen for the poor. The inventions of the wealthy create spare time and resources so that something can be given back. Without that infusion of wealth, Harrison Ford wouldn’t be able to donate his time to left leaning causes.

Harrison Ford is my favorite actor—maybe just a bit ahead of Clint Eastwood. Ford made a lot of money as an actor because American capitalist culture had expendable income to go see his movies in a darkened theater. He has turned around and done a lot of great things with that money. Individually he became a private pilot most notably crash landing his crippled vintage craft into a golf course saving the craft, people and even himself in a way that defies the actions of most Hollywood actors. But Ford is also a very giving person to the poor, to environmental causes, and to virtually everyone in his life. He is a person who is easy to respect. But what would he be without George Lucas creating the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films? He would have been just another actor jumping from job to job. Lucas used capitalism to create wealth not just in monetary value, but in philosophy. Without the creation of capitalism all the good things that Ford does in his private life would go nowhere. If he didn’t have excess as a result of his success, he’d have nothing to give away to others by his own volition.

That is why capitalism needs a real hero—and unapologetic champion. I had started formulating that champion years ago in my own character of Cliffhanger. In my novel The Symposium of Justice it is eluded that the protagonist made all his wealth by winning a lottery ticket. However, this is a falsehood created by his political enemies who are protecting their old money political connections from the reality of what Cliffhanger represents—creation and justice. Most people who win the lottery are broke within a few years because they lack the internal value as people to support the sudden infusion of wealth. Unlike people like Elon Musk, most people lack the ability to create wealth, so they assume that it’s a finite resource open for equal distribution discussion. But they are dreadfully wrong. As the Cliffhanger series The Curse of Fort Seven Mile continues to evolve over the coming installments it becomes quite clear who and what Cliffhanger is and why people who can perform such creation are so important to society.

When I was in high school I was the only kid who actually wore a t-shirt featuring Howard Hughes on it. I’ve always liked Hughes and Harrison Ford’s recent plane crash reminded me a lot of a similar incident that Hughes had, in the same area years ago. Hughes was extremely rich, and did a lot of really good things with his money—particularly advancements in aviation that simply would not have happened without his actions. He was an eccentric whose mind ended up collapsing on itself, but the world is much better off because of his life than without it. Yet thousands, even millions of people flash upon the earth in a lifetime and disappear just the same and nobody notices. Is that fair? Aren’t they equal to Howard Hughes? The answer is no. The ability to create something from nothing is more important than equal distribution of fairness.

This brings us back to that summer in Florida with the Ayn Rand books. She was on to something and to my mind she broke through the first layer of an important revelation. In philosophy this is called the creation of Objectivism. I agree with most of the tenants of Objectivism. However Ayn Rand was a lot more socially liberal than I am. She was much more permissive on drugs and sex which hurts her position on capitalism. It allowed liberals to attack her as a product of excess greed and selfishness, which is an inaccurate assessment. The books of hers that I read were very valuable because what she was doing was on the cutting edge of a new way of thinking, so context is needed. Capitalism needed champions, and she officered them particularly in her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Other than those characters there really aren’t any other champions of capitalism in novels or movies—with the rare exception of Harrison Ford’s film characters particularly Han Solo. In almost every other circumstance, most notably the man everyone loved to hate in the 80s television show Dallas—in JR, or Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazzard, rich people are evil and need to have something taken from them and given to people supposedly repressed and in need of equality.

The truth of the matter is that people who don’t have things are in that condition by choice most of the time. The big difference between people like Elon Musk and the typical volunteer at a local soup kitchen is that one creates wealth that enriches our entire culture and the other just does good deeds. Both are important, both may be good men, but only one makes something from nothing which leads to good options for everyone. The creation of Space X is more important than a local charity asking people to throw money into a hat for the needy. Space X creates expendable income to toss into the hat. Without it, there is nothing to donate to the needy.

The efforts of my new Cliffhanger installments are to further this exploration into the morality of capitalism in a way that has been utterly ignored. Ayn Rand started the process and did a lot of great work along that line of thought, but there is much, much more to do. This Cliffhanger project will likely go on for many years but already the stories feel like a continuation of the type of material I wanted to read more of after that summer vacation in Florida. After I ran out of those Ayn Rand books I wanted more, but since she died in the early 80s, there was nothing more to read. But there needed to be. So it is up to us in this new generation to expand on those arguments and further peel back the mysterious goodness of capitalism and to properly define why collectivism is a vile evil—even when its been told to us for centuries that it’s the only path to redemption. These are difficult subjects, but they need to be explored—and through Cliffhanger—they will be.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Run Liz Run: Mud, cigarettes, and short-haired braless skanks–the typical progressive

From my vantage point Hillary Clinton is so left of center she might as well be a communist. However, given her recent email scandals and the line of baggage she has from here to eternity behind her it is clear what a presidency liker hers would look like. She’s a Clinton and like her husband she will be covered in scandal from day one until the conclusion of her time. She plays too many games and breaks too many laws knowingly to avoid scandal, so if people want someone like that after eight years of Obama just because they want to put a “woman” in the White House then her email scandal is what a typical Hillary administration will look like day by day. It was for her husband, and it will certainly be for her as well.  The Clinton’s don’t know how to do it any other way. They are unethical skanks built on a philosophy of collectivism.

Already there is discontent however and many liberals are pulling away from Hillary and looking to Elizabeth Warren as their preferred pick. And “Liz” is even worse than Hillary as far as her political beliefs. When the politics of the two are compared Hillary looks to be as conservative as Calvin Coolidge compared to the excessively liberal Elizabeth Warren. How liberal? Well, listen to this 60s style folk song to get the gist of what an Elizabeth Warren presidency would look like and what kind of knuckle-dragging slugs would vote for her.

We are clearly not one nation. I find it hard to believe that so many people actually are attracted to the kind of positions that Elizabeth Warren represents—her basic platform is attacking the rich with the typical socialist re-distribution plans so common with Democrats. Stealing other people’s money is an attractive concept for the perpetually lazy, but Elizabeth Warren supporters don’t even feel bad about it.

When I was a little kid I had picked up a pack of gum that I asked my mom to buy. She said yes, but I never put it in the shopping cart. When it came time to pay I was holding it while she paid the attendant and nobody noticed that I had it. I was so young I had no idea that nobody would ring it up if it wasn’t on the check-out counter. My mom paid for all our groceries and we went out to the car as I opened the gum to chew. That’s when my mom realized that we hadn’t paid for that pack of gum and she pretty much flipped out. I felt so bad and dishonest that I had taken something without earning it. We immediately went back into the grocery to pay for the pack of gum which was all of .35 cents I think. It bothered me that I had technically stolen something even if I didn’t realize it at the time. In my house such a thing was very serious. There was no excuse.

When Elizabeth Warren and other progressives like her attack “the rich” they are essentially saying that they want to steal from those who earn money. They demonize Wall Street as the generator of greed as they advocate mass collectivism and hippie values of equality—which is impossible. Not everyone is equal, some people work hard and some people are lazy. The difference progressives highlight are men against women, white against black, young against old—but in essence in America no matter who or what you are, if you are will are willing to work hard you can overcome any barrier and become wealthy. The big differential against equality for all is work ethic. Some people are just lazy, and some people work hard. So long as there are hard workers who have money and a bunch of slugs who are lazy want to be equal to their efforts without the work, you will always have Elizabeth Warren supporters.

The campaign song for Warren titled “Run Liz Run” is disturbing because it insinuates that we should vote for the Senator because she’s a woman, and because the system is rigged in favor of “big business.” The folksy tone of the song congers up marijuana smoke, long smelly hair and the muddy ground of an outdoor music festival where the grass has been trampled bare after a heavy night rain and everyone have thrown burnt cigarettes into the saturated soil which squeezes up between the toes of shoeless despots. At such a place a young Elizabeth Warren might even be topless to show that women can take their shirt off just as a man can—and because she’s such a rabid feminist nobody would even look at her and think its attractive. It’s just one big mental image of yuck.

America is split, there is an us and them—and we are not all equal. We may be born that way, but through decisions, some people migrate to the lazy column and end up voting for people like Elizabeth Warren. Others make money and become rich, or are on a path toward that destination—they work and create as the others take what is earned by conservatives. Overwhelmingly most in the media support Warren which says a lot about them. I have known, and still know a lot of people in the media and I generally enjoy those people because I like show business. I like cameras, studios and the kind of creativity that goes on to make any kind of production whether it’s just the news or a cooking show. But politically, once those people open their mouths, I think of spit, vomit, and dirty braless short-haired marijuana smoking hippies who walk with bare feet in that festival soil sloshing about in the mud like a pig—cigarettes and all. Their kind of America is not my kind of America—and we are not all equal, or see things even remotely close to the same way.

Run Liz Run, like the song says, but not for office, but to a country that is openly communist, like North Korea, China or the stifling socialism of the European Union. Those are places better suited for Elizabeth Warren’s politics, and her run for president of something besides the most powerful economy on earth.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Mercedes-Benz F015: A critical step in transportation

I know that before I can have my flying car technology will have to prove it can handle itself without the decision-making tampering of a human being. There is no other way that such a thing could work; ordinary citizens are not able to pilot a vehicle that transports itself through the air as a collective mass. It would have to be a mobile living space that takes the fear of flight completely out of the hands of the consumer. Such technology currently exists, but for the psychological emergence of it, the machinery would have to display itself in a form that is currently understood and accepted—the automobile. Cars would first have to display how they can navigate themselves into mobile living centers instead of driver induced vehicles moving from point A to B. Once driverless cars become common, then the same technology could move into personal skycars which take off from a driveway and land wherever intended. I dream of the day where I can get into such a vehicle from my driveway and fly directly to Disney World in Orlando Florida in the same morning, sleeping reading or writing the entire way. Such a trip might occur at 6 AM only to arrive at the point of destination before noon and without the travel fatigue typically involved. To my eyes, the bridge to get to such a technological breakthrough is the new Mercedes-Benz F015.

It is hard for me to see the driver beginning to be irrelevant in the automobile. I love driving—I’m extremely good at it, and I love the independence of the American car the way it has emerged in culture within the United States. It should be obvious from my novel The Tail of the Dragon how much I love cars, hot rods, and racing in general. I have a feeling my reverence for cowboys and westerns will soon find with it the American car driver as something to remember fondly. For many years I have enjoyed driving cars excessively fast. I remember a day when fixing up a car and cruising around on a Friday night just to show it off was something people did—and I loved it. But it’s not lost to me that it’s a dying trend and I can see the benefits of a car that drives itself.

Consider the possibility of the new Mercedes-Benz F015. Say I wanted to make that same trip to Disney World from Cincinnati with my family. To travel to such a place I would need three of them—so say I did and we were all vacationing together as we tend to do—and while in transit we wanted to play video games together or just have conversations instead of waiting until the next rest stop. We could activate the interior panels inside the car and speak to one another with all the mobile adaptability of Face Time so popular with the Apple devices. The door panels inside the car are simply giant touch screens where the interior could come alive in conversations with people in the other cars of your party, or device gaming to pass the time. The inside of the Mercedes F015 wouldn’t be any different from a living room in a home; all the niceties would be there without the concern or responsibility of driving.

On such a long trip most of my speed comes from wanting to arrive at my destination, I usually try to cruise at or above 80 MPH. If I didn’t have the responsibility to stay up all night to drive so everyone else could sleep, I could avoid that lag period after such a trip where it takes a day to recover. I’ve driven all night to Florida on many occasions and it is always hard. We chose to leave around 10 PM so that we can arrive around 3 PM the next day and still have time to do something once we arrive. But it usually takes a few days to recover from the trip—for everyone. In the Mercedes F015 we could just sleep through a good portion of the trip. One thing that I’ve learned about such trips is that sometimes faster is slower. Even though a self-driving car would irritatingly obey all the traffic laws, it would not be prone to rubber necking along the highway. Most of the traffic issues on a highway are do to curious drivers looking at something in dense patterns starting a chain reaction of brake lights that slows down the entire highway. This is particularly obvious in Atlanta, Georgia. If a large percentage of cars on a highway were self-driving rubber necking would be a thing of the past actually speeding up the overall average speed of travel. If I drive really fast to Orlando, Florida I might be able to shave an hour and a half off the 15 hour trip. That is a lot of time but I would gladly trade it if I could do other useful things while in transit. I could read a book or play a video game instead of driving.

Even better would be a commute to work each day. I would gladly trade driving to a job with the ability to read and watch the news while easing into my day without the responsibility of navigation. It would actually increase the productive use of a day to gain that time allowing a person of responsibly to begin their work day the moment they left their driveway. It would be possible then to leave later for work and come home earlier since irritating aspects of a business day are often reading and answering emails. In the Mercedes F015 much of that work could be done during the commute which would save tremendous amounts of time per day in which personal time could be gained without the expense of lost productivity.

Driving is wonderful, I’ll probably always do a little of it, but I would gladly welcome the ability to extend my living space to a mobile transport which allowed me to do other things that are more valuable to me. Driving and reacting to other drivers is a puzzle that might be challenging, but it does bring a level of stress to our lives that we typically just ignore because of the lack of options. A Mercedes F015 would change all that—and I’d welcome it.

More than anything driverless cars with the sleek appearance of the new Mercedes are what we expect for 2015. Our world should be transforming into the products of our inventions instead of new renditions of the latest 1970s car company when the Big Three in America dominated the global market. The new Chrysler mini vans look like a shoe box and the various models of sport vehicles just don’t go far enough into the kind of transports a future driven by exciting new technology should deliver. The Mercedes F015 is much more along the lines of what I thought this particular point in history should have always looked than the stuffy safety of inside the box thinking that we have been seeing out of car companies over the last two decades.

Of course the next step for the automated car is to take to the air. Once society accepts that cars can drive themselves, perhaps then they’ll accept the same technology in the sky instead of trying up roads on the ground. Roads will always have some importance for point to point delivery of products and services. But, the air is where it’s at as far as transporting ourselves from one place to another. It would be extremely useful to me to be able to fly to Chicago or Cleveland from my driveway and arrive at a parking garage within the city in 45 minutes to an hour eating my breakfast along the way and conducting preliminary business in route.

Such technology is already present; the only restriction is our own human insecurities. There is no reason to hang on to the old when the new has so much to offer. There are better things for a mind to spend its time on than looking at some car in front of you packed in traffic. Let a computer waste its time on that activity—because our brains need to be free to pursue other interests. The Mercedes-Benz F015 is exciting, but to my mind it’s a decade too late. Its time to see the future we should have had all along, and for transportation, the new Mercedes is the benchmark of all things to come. And I welcome it.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Lobby: Progressive groups making themselves extinct

You know the rule, its been covered here before—typically if an organization of any kind has the word, “international” in front of it, it’s a progressive front group desiring to regress the world of capitalism into a world of socialist utopia. It doesn’t matter if it’s your local fire house, or the slack-jawed thugs passing out pamphlets on a street corner advertising membership into their International Association of Machinists and Aerospace workers. They are all progressive organizations hell-bent on changing America from a capitalist country into a socialist one. Their record is clear, and there are no exceptions—if it’s a labor union with an international designation—their strategic objectives are the destruction of capitalism. To drive the point home, they recently met with the extreme progressive Senator Elizabeth Warren lobbying the Trans-Pacific Partnership because they are afraid that it will cause American jobs to leave for distant shores due to actions of their own making. Have a look at a report from their own website with the link included to see for yourself the unbelievably ignorant position in politics they take for themselves.

IAM members meet with U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on Stop Fast Track Lobby Day in Washington, DC. Warren has been outspoken in her opposition to the administration’s plan to rush through the Trans-Pacific Partnership with only an up-or-down vote.

IAM members joined a blitz of union activists in Washington, DC to lobby against a dangerous proposal to “Fast Track” the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive free trade deal that will allow more of the same trade policies that have hurt working families for the last 20 years.

Fast Track authority would limit Congress to an up-or-down vote on the TPP with no opportunity to offer amendments.

“The President won’t even tell your Senator or your Congressman what the details are, but he wants Fast Track Authority to present this and rush it through,” IAM International President told members before they fanned out around the Capitol.

Over one hundred IAM members were out in full force with members of other AFL-CIO-affiliated unions, hustling from office to office to tell members of Congress that the TPP is shaping up to be a disaster for working families.

“I’m here to say that we’re here to make a difference,” said Kirby Boyce, Vice President of IAM Local 1746 in Connecticut. “We have to keep the jobs in America and we do not want them to go, they went in NAFTA already and we don’t want them to go again.”

Hawaii IAM Local 1998 member Roxan Bradley-Taylor said her mother’s job at General Electric Vacuum Cleaner in East Cleveland, OH was offshored to Mexico in the 1970s. Her mother suffered a stroke after she was laid off and died at the age of 43.

She scheduled a meeting with Rep. Mark Takai (D-HI), who has signed a letter opposing Fast Track.

“I hope he can convince his colleagues to vote no too,” said Bradley-Taylor.

The TPP is being negotiated behind closed doors between the U.S. and 11 Pacific-Rim countries, including notorious human and labor rights violators Vietnam, Brunei and Mexico. It dramatically expands corporate control over the U.S. economy and reduces the ability of the U.S. to promote health, safety and environmental regulations with our trading partners.

 

http://www.goiam.org/index.php/imail/latest/14138-iam-lobbies-on-capitol-hill-to-stop-fast-track-save-us-jobs

So the IAM union went to Washington to lobby for job safety by essentially trapping employers into dealing exclusively with their monopoly on the labor pool—or their desire to have such a monopoly. Labor unions are dying state by state with Wisconsin being the latest to do the correct thing and bring right-to-work to their bastion of progressive history. Yet the IAM refuses to see the writing on the wall and instead of dealing with reality, they are pretending that it’s 1930—the height of the Red Decade in America where communism was trying to squeeze itself under the doors of capitalism. And their solution to jobs leaving America is to trap those jobs in place with more laws from their lobby efforts.

Labor unions are a really stupid idea and they should be against the law in the United States. They are the ultimate snake oil salesmen selling job security and seniority rights, but their efforts at collective bargaining destroy the jobs they propose to protect. You can have a haphazard slob as a protected employee gaining the same rights as the hardest worker in the company. The hard worker will resent the slob and will back off their efforts out of anger—since there is no profit for them over anyone else. Everyone isn’t equal, and all wages are not meant to be the same no matter what their effort. When union employees get paid whether or not they work hard or take it easy, there is no motivation to be productive—and unions destroy that productivity. They have never worked and they never will.

When an employer has to deal with constantly high wage expectations from average employees, and work stoppages every few years that there is a contract negotiation, companies have little choice but to pick up and leave for someplace friendlier to their efforts at making money. Imagine dear reader if you spent the entire afternoon picking apples so that you could make apple pie to sell at a profit. Consider that you had a good day and had picked three baskets of nice green apples ripe for a pie. Then consider that a labor union came along and took two of those baskets demanding collective bargaining compensation for a perceived value they have about who owns the apples. The labor union might assume incorrectly that the apples belong to nature, so are available to everyone who wants to eat them. However, if left to them, the apples would never be plucked from a tree, but left to rot until the tree drops them to the ground for the worms to consume. The union only wants the apples because someone else picked them. If they had to pick them on their own, the apples would stay on the tree and the slugs would pick up what they could off the ground as they needed them, worms and all. That’s what it feels like to business to have a union demand their profit as though excess belonged to everyone—the progressive “worker.” But it’s the effort of job creation that takes the initiative to pick the apples that counts, and the employer is more important than the employee, because without the job creator, there is no job. If someone doesn’t pick the apples, nobody enjoys apple pie.

Society is inherently lazy—at least the masses are. The hardest workers are likely to be the wealthiest and unions favor the lazy at the expense of the most productive. There’s no job security in laziness. That is the reason jobs are leaving America, not because of the greed of American corporations, but because too many workers are lazy and expect too much money for doing entirely too little. Unions spend a lot of time lobbying Washington as they did over this TPP issue—and if they expended that effort on actual productive work, they may actually keep their jobs instead of losing them to a country with a workforce hungry for effort and the benefits of enterprise. But they don’t, because inherently they are a self-destructive organization much like their progressive influences. Their real aim is to regress backwards, not to progress toward anything better. And in the case of the ignorant IAM, they would rather twist arms and break backs with extortion and laws, than to actually work—and that is why they are a dying species of collectivists destined to their own extinction.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Joe Biden’s Delusions: Dealing with a Presidential idiot

Apparently Joe Biden was upset with the March 9th letter that forty-seven Republican Senators sent to the Islamic Republic of Iran explaining how the American Constitution works in the United States. The concern is that President Obama is in nuclear negotiations with Iran which anybody with just a few coherent thoughts knows is trouble. Obama has been proven incompetent—so there is no trust in someone like him negotiating anything with one of the biggest sponsors of terror in the world. That’s like asking a 2-year-old child to beat the heavyweight champion in the world in a fight to the death. Hey, anything can happen—but likely, the child will lose the fight. Obama can’t be trusted to organize how much to tip the pizza guy, let alone arms negotiations with Iran, so the GOP had to remind Iran that no matter what they came up with the President, that it would require Congressional approval to make it valid. American presidents are not kings and cannot do anything without the backing of the larger Republic—and for good reason. Past American presidents have overstepped their boundaries, Woodrow Wilson for one and his Treaty of Versailles involvement, along with a host of others who followed who clearly were behaving like part of a monarchy instead of a Constitutional Republic, are guilty of trying to prop themselves up as kings in America. In the past Presidents were given a bit of a pass out of respect to the Oval Office, but with Obama, that respect has been destroyed by his own actions. He didn’t give any respect to Congress or members of the GOP, so he’s not getting any free passes for the sake of the office he holds. He’s clearly an idiot, so it’s important that Iran understand that everyone in America isn’t as stupid as President Obama.

Yet Vice-President Biden knowing full well the mistakes of the administration that he’s a part of came to the defense of his President saying, “this letter, in the guise of a constitutional lesson, ignores two centuries of precedent and threatens to undermine the ability of any future American President, whether Democrat or Republican, to negotiate with other nations on behalf of the United States. Honorable people can disagree over policy. But this is no way to make America safer or stronger.” Well, the VP is wrong. The White House’s defense on this matter is to basically say, “but other presidents overstepped their authority, so we should be allowed also.” That type of behavior has made the United States weaker, so any action that pulls these renegade presidents back under control of the Constitution needs to be implemented to build again the strength of the American Republic.

Biden continued, “In thirty-six years in the United States Senate, I cannot recall another instance in which Senators wrote directly to advise another country—much less a longtime foreign adversary—that the president does not have the constitutional authority to reach a meaningful understanding with them. This letter sends a highly misleading signal to friend and foe alike that our commander-in-chief cannot deliver on America’s commitments—a message that is as false as it is dangerous.” Well, the reason is that at no point in those thirty-six years was there an American president as bad and incompetent as Obama is. The guy went from a community organizer with a questionable background who spent his personal and professional time with open terrorists, and America is supposed to sit back and let him negotiate with a country with known terrorist support against the West. Obama was elected because of the color of his skin, and he lied about a lot of things to get into office. Once there, he changed his positions and covered his tracks at every juncture, and this is the person Biden thinks should have unfettered ability to strike a treaty with a terrorist loving nation wanting nuclear technology? Sorry, that’s not how logic works.

Too many people enjoy the pageantry of monarchs. It’s one of those ridiculous European fantasies where kings and queens ruled with absolute authority. But that’s not how it was ever to be in the United States. Over time, our roots to Europe have pulled our society back into the ritual of tabloid worship of leaders and royalty, but that doesn’t change the fact that those assumptions are incorrect. America doesn’t have a king or a queen and if the Constitution is followed, it never will. Many presidents have pushed their Constitutional limits, particularly the progressive Republican in disguise Teddy Roosevelt when he attacked the railroads with his anti-trust busting antics and built the Panama Canal with deals that clearly violated the Constitution. In the end, the masses supported those endeavors so it was easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, and Presidents have been openly violating the Constitution ever since. American Presidents with the exception of Calvin Coolidge and maybe a few others have pushed the limit more and more expecting the other houses of government to just sit back and let them do anything they wanted—as a global statesman on par with kingship. Finally, the radical activist lawyer and community organizer Obama has went too far, and the Senate is doing their job of pulling him back to reality.

The fact that Biden stated in all his vast history of government work that he’s never seen such a thing take place only speaks to how long the Senate has not done their jobs properly in checking the power of a White House President—no matter who they are. Pleading ignorance is not a viable strategy to eliciting treaties from foreign rivals like Iran, and essentially Biden is fighting to maintain the right of a fool to do massive destruction to American foreign policy just to maintain the façade of kingship at the White House. Sorry, Joe. With all your years in government, you should know that’s not how things are supposed to work. And given how stupid the VP’s statements are, I’d at least trust him to tip the pizza guy. But as to the president, absolutely not—I don’t care how stylish it is to have a man of color in the White House—I can think of a lot of dark-skinned Americans who I’d vote for as president in less than a second. But Obama is not one of them, because—he’s an idiot.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

ISIS Deliberate Destruction of Archaeology: Hiding the past to preserve power

 

As predicted the thugs, losers, and knuckle-dragging misfits of ignorance have repeated history. Nearly four years prior to the day I predicted this would happen and would be the worst impact of the Muslim Brotherhood radicalism in Egypt. Glenn Beck was being ridiculed for his predictions of a caliphate, and many were wondering why I was more concerned about the museum in Cairo during the siege than the supposed wonderful flowering of “democracy” that was emerging under the full support of the Obama White House. READ WHAT I SAID THEN BY CLICKING HERE, then continue with this article. I knew this would happen, and now it has. New videos released on Thursday apparently show ISIS militants destroying Assyrian and Akkadian artifacts in Mosul—smashing statues and scraping through a winged bull from the 7th century B.C.

This is only the latest episode in a spree of iconoclasm ISIS has unleashed across the areas under its control in Iraq and Syria. In May 2014, there were reports of separate Assyrian artifacts being excavated and destroyed. In July 2014, fighters destroyed the Tomb of the Prophet Jonah in Nineveh. Earlier this week, reports said the group had burned 100,000 books and manuscripts from the Mosul library.

Related Stories

  1. New ISIS Video Shows Militants Smashing Ancient Iraq Artifacts Huffington Post
  2. Militants abduct more Christians, smash ancient artifacts Associated Press
  3. The Destruction of Cultural Heritage Should be a War Crime The Wall Street Journal
  4. UN Official: ISIS Destruction of Ancient City of Nimrud, Artifacts a ‘War Crime’ ABC News
  5. With sledgehammer, Islamic State smashes Iraqi history Reuters

http://news.yahoo.com/erased-isis-destruction-ancient-artifacts-210549825–politics.html

History is being erased right before our eyes in a deliberate attempt to re-write it into a theocracy as predicted by Vico. The scale of destruction occurring in modern-day Iraq and Syria all up and down the Tigres Euphrates Valley is on par with the tragic killing of Hypatia by the barbarian Cyril who skinned her alive in the streets of Alexandria ripping her into pieces limb for limb eventually being burnt until nothing remained of her. The destruction of the Library at Alexandria is one of the greatest crimes ever committed and it was done by Christian extremists who wanted no knowledge of the world that existed before their religion in an open attempt to cast the world into ignorance, which launched the Dark Ages from that moment in 415 AD. To this day much of this prehistory has been lost. CLICK HERE TO READ MY ARTICLE ON THAT ISSUE AS WELL.

Archaeology in Iraq had been impossible because of the various wars conducted there for the last several decades. Of a particular interest the original Garden of Eden is thought to be in Iraq and much of the history of Sumerian religion originated there. Research in the war-torn area has been contentious at best and what has been found over the last 100 years of archaeology ended up in the museums, which have now largely been destroyed by ISIS terrorists. The intent is the same as it has always been, to erase the past so that the new regime of religious thought can pronounce themselves rulers of the world and throw everyone under their domination. It’s an archaic mentality that mankind is meant to evolve from, but due to the lack of vision, or rather the support of the political underpinnings of our current civilization, it’s being encouraged.

Even in the United States there have been several instances of revisionist history conducted. The giants who lived in North America – people over 7 feet tall in a large society that extended from the Great Lakes all the way to the Gulf of Mexico had an advanced mathematical culture and large cities that are now buried beneath our feet. The bones have been hidden away or destroyed all together to maintain the illusion that the Indians of Columbus were always in place and that no greater culture prior to the European arrival was ever in place before Christian conquest. I have written much on the deliberate destruction of many archaeological sites in just my home state of Ohio, including the one up the road from my house at the The Mound nuclear complex. CLICK HERE TO READ ALL ABOUT THAT.

It is because of all this deliberate destruction of history that I don’t trust much of anything reported by any institutional claim any longer preferring to make my own judgments from puzzled together pieces of text, such as the late Zachariah Stichen conducted. He was one of the few people who could read Sumerian text and he was convinced that the Tigres Euphrates Valley was settled by the Anunnaki who were extraterrestrials from a planet beyond Neptune called Nibiru—at least according to the mythology he was able to decipher. It’s possible that some of these stories were early versions of fiction the way that Star Wars is to us today—but from what origin did the stories spring from their imaginations? Because the sudden rise in culture in that region is extremely mysterious. It defies logic. Some of the relics that were destroyed recently by ISIS where painting a picture toward this contemplation of extraterrestrial seeding. How convenient.   Just recently scientists finally concluded what many in science fiction have been saying for years, Mars had vast oceans and land masses complete with rivers and streams. Apparently a fifth of the planet’s surface had oceans at least the size of the Atlantic here on earth. The planet lost their atmosphere and also the water molecules that existed there which were eventually sucked out into space except for at the poles where the water was frozen. If one logically put all these elements together it would seem that Earth was seeded from someplace else—likely from Mars as the planet died and a race of larger, taller people came here from there. Sure it sounds like science fiction, but how can anybody ever prove otherwise—because ISIS just destroyed much of that past displayed in the museums of Iraq?

In many ways this is why I think the current caliphate in the Middle East has been allowed to spread-actually encouraged by the politics of Europe and America into fruition. I doubt that the many deaths that are occurring were part of the plan, but certainly the hope that science couldn’t do any real research in the Middle East to confirm some of these wild theories about human civilization coming from places like Mars to settle the city of Ur and the hanging gardens of Nebuchadnezzar could be supported by emerging evidence. There is an intense desire to protect the secrets of many current religions driven by a fear that new evidence will destroy the power structure given to them by public ignorance. Iraq was ground zero for much of this research and once the world began to notice the archaeology of the region and were trying to correspond it to Biblical text, some questions were naturally asked leading to the Sitchin theories which drives much of the New Age science contemplation to this day, that an undiscovered planet called Nibiru collided with a planet between Mars and Jupiter called Tiamat. The planet Nibiru is according to mythology in a long elliptical orbit which comes into the inner solar system only every 3,600 years. The people called the Anunnaki (Nephillim in Genesis) arrived on earth 450,000 years ago. Their descendents were likely the giants who settled North America and started the mound building cultures–at least according to the scattered archaeological evidence that have been pieced together. When Nibiru hit Tiamat leaving behind the vast asteroid belt that is currently between Jupiter and Mars it looks to have created a need for some sort of evacuation that put the Anunnaki onto earth to settle the Sumerian culture. Maybe they were on the doomed planet Tiamat, or perhaps they were on Mars—or both—but the catastrophe sent them fleeing to earth as their planets failed to sustain them. Highly likely, when we finally travel to Mars much of the archaeology that we are talking about here will be discovered—which is why our cultures are drag-assing to return to space. I am convinced that the reason we haven’t returned to the moon is because the governments of the world don’t think they can maintain their control of the population once such things are realized. Again, its only conspiracy at this point that is hard to prove when the evidence is destroyed—the way ISIS just did. In this case I think of the ISIS terrorists as the useful idiots in erasing information that the civilized orthodox isn’t comfortable with revealing to our educated tapestry.

The ISIS destruction of archaeology in Iraq and Syria—let alone Iran which is impossible to excavate in, points to a massive cover-up of the evidence emerging from scientists with a keen mind toward the puzzle pieces emerging of humanity’s actual origins—which extend well back before the Bible or the Koran. Knowledge is ultimately power and the ISIS thugs have had the winds of rebellion blown into their ears by the powers of Europe who want to maintain their “perspective” centered on religious doctrine. It is easy to hide such evidence if the Christian based west is insulted into defending their religion from the religious fanatics of Islam. Everyone eventually forgets to ask the question of what came before both of them were even considered. That is the million dollar question, one that was destroyed by ISIS for all the reasons that barbarians, cut-throats and terrorist through the centuries have done—to hide history so that they can declare themselves to an ignorant population the new rulers.

Just remember this dear reader, if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it—it still fell. History happens whether or not anybody consciously records it–or whether or not the evidence of such occurrences are destroyed. Whatever the truth is, it is still the truth even if ISIS destroys all the chronology of that truth. The big difference is that ISIS and all who look at the destruction left in their wake—which has been deliberately set off by those seeking to guard the truth from prying eyes—has been created to throw people off the trail and keep secrets that way for as long as possible. And that is the real crime being committed which is something every human being should take as an insult.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Kind of People Public Education Makes: Reasons not to fund government school

Every now and again I get a very revealing comment from some dissident who expects the collective hive of humanity to finance their personal whims. Such a comment can be seen below which has three main topics contained within it worth note regarding my video on the upcoming 2017 Lakota levy proposal. The commenter makes some very concise progressive arguments that require extensive examination, but first, let’s have a look at their opinion not just for its entertainment value, but for its essential argument.

Sean Robinson

7 hours ago

 

I know you thrive on people like me commenting, but if you are that miserable living in this district find somewhere else to go. Or run for the school board. Your consistent attack on schools shows you didn’t have a good time in school growing up. That isn’t the case for everybody. Being this negative all the time has got to feel miserable for you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZR0ob708q8&feature=youtu.be

The first assumption is that as a long time resident in the Lakota district that I should be willing to move just because a bunch of tax increase supporters moved in from progressive regions of the country—like the East Coast, and brought with them the mentality of their homeland. The same flood of ideology is actually behind the argument of amnesty where Democrats support bringing in voters from south of the border in socialist and communist countries so that they will vote in favor of measures that favor progressive advancements. The same happens with housing developments. Government schools see alliances with increased housing development as a change agent for community relations. I liked my community before those people showed up. I put up with them when I have to see them around town. But I find it intolerable that their lifestyle choices dictate that I pay them more money. There isn’t anywhere on earth where you can run from these second-hander type people, because they seek to consume everything and everyone in their path as they must consume the essence of others to sustain themselves—like any typical parasite. There is a reason that most levy supporters have in their ranks a host of real estate agents who use school levies to make easy sales to cultural dissidents looking for the latest and greatest new thing. Currently my community is that latest and greatest thing. In two decades people like that commenter will be off to the next place leaving the Lakota district an empty husk like a plate after a meal. They will have consumed everything they could and moved on to something else leaving someone else to clean up the mess. At that time, I will likely still be involved in the area and that will be people like me. They’ll be long gone and their kids will be saying the same stupid stuff to somebody else who moved deep into the country to get away from idiots like that, only to have a new generation of saps sucking off the efforts of others.

The next question is that if I know so much about education management of resources then why don’t I run for school board and solve the problem from the inside. Well, I have been approached about this before and many thought that during the Lakota campaigns in the past that my eventual angle was to be a school board member. Actually, I just didn’t want to pay higher taxes for something I think is inefficient and in desperate need of a reboot. Public education to me is one of the dumbest and most out-dated concepts in our modern society. I don’t think there’s anything effective on a substantive level, about public education let alone enough to support justification of the money forced from property owners to continue financing. My management method as a school board member would be to shut the whole thing down, not to find a way to preserve it. If pretentious people like that commenter want a free baby sitting service for their children, then they should pay for it. There are much, much better ways of getting an education in modern America and if parents really cared about their children, they’d pull them out of a public class and teach them in a private school or at home with the vast resources available today. Loving a kid does not mean sending them to school. It requires a lot more than that. Supporting children in educational opportunities is important, but restricting children to a government education system that is obviously not working is not the answer.

One of the things that Scott Sloan from 700 WLW wanted me to do during the Lakota campaign was to join with the pro levy people to argue at the state level a proper allocation of state funding, which is currently considered unconstitutional. His wife is a real estate agent and put up with our school levy rants only so long, until it became problematic and evident that I wasn’t buying into the state funding solution. I wasn’t going to argue toward the state to send more money to Lakota because the money would just be lost in inflated wages driven too high by collective bargaining agreements. So long as there is a labor union in charge of Lakota or any public education institution, management is not possible. My answer is to just de-fund it, shut it down, make the labor unions illegal, then and only then can there be some measure of management and reform of public education. Otherwise, it’s a waste of time. Any discussion of money, funding, or taxes to support failure is just stupid.

I have said recently in another article, which is probably why this guy brought it up, that I didn’t enjoy my school years. I thought of it as a waste of time. I was ready to graduate in the third grade and was miserable every single year thereafter until I graduated. I looked at the school as a prison and on my graduation day, I was released and I never looked back. I had lots of friends and I still do. I’m far from an anti-social hermit. In fact, I have so many people who I correspond with that I don’t have hours in a given day to spend with all of them. I couldn’t in a hundred lifetimes. My school years were not as this commenter alluded, miserable because of some social status whereas people like them had fun in school—within the social structure of a government backed entity. Some people love that kind of structure and I see those people as huge contributors to many of the modern problems facing our world today. It is not my job to fund people’s good experiences, which is what the commenter expects. Because they are the feeble type that like functioning within the structure of government schools they expect everyone to pay for their sustenance. I think government schools make people like that commenter worse and more neurotic as people, so paying them more money to create more of that behavior makes no sense to me. I couldn’t wait to leave school. I sure as hell don’t want to spend the rest of my life paying for other people to attend such a place. That is also just stupid.

As to being a miserable person or feeling miserable because of always thinking about such negativity—nothing could be further from the truth. Naturally, I’m a positive person—actually excessively so. I can endure large amounts of negativity without being encumbered by misery. I am also self-sustaining meaning that I don’t live through other people the way a lot have been taught to. So there is a spill over effect to my optimism which many enjoy, and depend on. It is no problem for me to deal with really complex and sorrowful issues without personally becoming miserable as a result. I can write long articles like this one every day for the rest of my life and then immediately turn around and do something fun with my wife and kids at the drop of a hat. Life is something meant to be approached the way children play. You have to extract some level of joy out of all situations otherwise you are doing something wrong. The mere fact that this commenter brought this issue up dictates that they are subject to misery, depression, and other forms of mental illness derived from living an incorrect life lacking intellectual mechanism for navigation through day-to-day activity. That is not a problem for me and it never will be. That is why I take these issues on, because other people seem to have trouble staying on course and still maintain their sanity. The utterance of a miserable condition is not applicable. Public school helps create neurosis which leads to mental illness of various degrees, and it would appear the commenter is prone to such things based on their perceptual reality. They shouldn’t assume that everyone in the world is prone to the same weaknesses.

You can learn a lot from the type of comments that people make, and over time you can build up quite a data base of behavioral conditions which invoke them. When it comes to public education the most successful products of government seem to be the greatest menaces to modern freedom and righteous thinking. The obvious conclusion is to eliminate that corrosive element which is my position on public education. As a government backed entity its exclusive product is to create second-handers–people who live through others for their personal sustenance. The commenter is clearly one of those types of people and he assumes that the entire world should think the way he does. And his ultimate presumption to the comment provided is that if you don’t like the way he thinks, then it is your obligation to leave. That is not how the world works. The fault is his in allowing himself to think incorrectly about things and to be taught such ridiculous concepts that are completely stupid, and irrelevant to logic.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Another Abusive Teacher: Good reporting from Karin Johnson and Lauren Pack

There aren’t many media outlets any more that report trouble with the public education system—where employees lose control of themselves and abuse their authority over young students. One reason is that those media outlets have been watching an erosion of trust that voters have toward public education, and it’s scary to them. To many people their school aged years were the best days of their lives, and they want good memories for their children. They want to overlook trouble when it presents itself so that their children can have the nice experience they had when they were young students. Yet, to my experience, I hated my public education years.  It was extremely confining and I always considered it a waste of time. The older I get, the more firmly I feel that the entire system should be completely overhauled so to more properly utilize the natural ambition exhibited by children toward learning—because public education has a tendency to kill that ambition leaving flat, boring adults as a product of that institutional system of learning. Channel 5’s Karin Johnson and I have had this talk before and over time, we have moved in different directions. My experience with advocating for lower tax imposition upon communities is easy for me, because I think the system always needed to be changed. But for her, she had a very good public education experience and it is hard to look back and be critical of it. But to her credit, unlike most reporters in and around Cincinnati—she still does a lot of education news and when something goes wrong, she’s there to sniff it out.

According to a report filed Monday and reported nearly exclusively by Channel 5’s Karin Johnson and the Journal News reporter Lauren Pack, a student at Edgewood Middle School told the school resource officer that a female substitute teacher struck her in the face with a ruler. Two other students claimed the substitute teacher taped their hands to a chair. The incidents occurred between Feb. 16 and Feb. 27, according to the report.

Wisely school Principal Alesia Beckett removed the substitute teacher from the school and took measures to have her removed from the county’s substitute teaching list, which is facilitated through Warren County Educational Service Center.

“I was made aware of the situation on Thursday afternoon. The sub was not in the building on Thursday, so I met with her prior to the start of class on Friday morning. After our meeting, I let her know that her time here was over and that she needed to get her things and leave. At that point, our school resource officer and I confirmed that she had exited the building,” Beckett said. She added the woman was a long-term sub for a teacher on leave.

http://www.wlwt.com/news/substitute-teacher-now-banned-from-16-schools-in-butler-warren-counties/31593720

http://oldschoolcincy.com/29316/butler-county-teacher-accused-of-duct-taping-and-hitting-students/

http://www.journal-news.com/news/news/crime-law/substitute-teacher-accused-of-striking-student/nkM2N/

I admire Karin for doing these stories, because there is a lot of pressure not to do them—because people generally want to feel good about public education. But……they want and need to know about teachers substitute or otherwise who let the power go to their heads to the point where they are abusive. My accusation is that most parents use public education as a baby sitting service and could care less what really happens to kids in public school because they are too busy to think about it. Acknowledging that there are serious flaws in public education takes guts, and to her credit, Karin has it. She doesn’t see the demonizing that I do, because our perspective was different, but the results are something that the truth will ultimately carry everyone to eventually. I would have loved to have graduated from high school in the third grade. Some people never want to graduate, and wish to always remain 15 years old. So differences will always be present. But what matters most is overcoming those types of handicaps to tell the truth about a situation so that the voting population can take measure.

If Karin Johnson didn’t do stories like this, there would be no reason for administrators to take swift action to stop bad behavior. In this case Principal Beckett acted correctly and the Journal News and Channel 5 was there to apply the needed pressure from the media to keep everyone honest. But many of the local community papers are so dependent on local school advertising that they have lost their objectivity in reporting the bad news surrendering their integrity to only report the good touchy feely stories that keep levy money pouring in.

Without some level of competition the power-hungry and abusive types find it irresistible to dominate individuals thrown under their command by the power of a position. There are certainly a percentage of police officers who are drawn to the field of police work because it gives them power over other people. There are others who enjoy being in control at the front of a class room and having power over others. It is a powerful experience for someone who craves power to stand in front of a class of 30 people and hold their fates over the fires of judgment. Being the type of person who hates authority with nearly every cell in my body, I had my fill of this behavior in kindergarten. It was a real struggle to not get into trouble because I never allowed myself to yield to any authority figures. Teachers were the first I was exposed to and I never yielded and am extremely proud of it. That trait does me very well currently. I used to make the lives of people like this Edgewood substitute teacher a living hell, and I enjoyed it—because I knew they enjoyed having power over little kids. I still enjoy seeing people like that fall from grace, because I think of them as bad people to begin with. But, it’s not easy to accept by those who want the system to work.

But be assured, this is not an isolated case. It’s just an under reported one. Government schools are filled with these personality types and there just aren’t enough Karin Johnston’s out there, or newspaper reporters like Lauren Pack who ask the dive down questions that are hard for public relations professionals to step around. If not for those two, there might be no public education stories of any honest assessment left in traditional Southwestern Ohio media. Everyone else has pretty much given up and fallen in with the feel good sentiment that keeps levy money pouring in from voters and feeding the corruption and destruction of minds built so negatively in public education. Thankfully, everyone hasn’t given up. Karin may want to preserve the current system with honest reporting, but at least she’s not a sell-out. And that makes her a very good person.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Blaze Radio: An evolution of thought and freedom

I have raved before about how much I enjoy The Blaze Radio Network when my friend Doc Thompson acquired a job with them. As a long time AM radio listener going back several decades now, I enjoy news stations and talk radio the way an air traffic controller might enjoy monitoring sky traffic through radio chatter. It is assuring to me to hear intellectual activity from minds talking over the radio about their thoughts and opinions on given matters. Formally it was the local Cincinnati station of 700 WLW, which is how I came to know Doc, that I most listened to sometimes 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. But not anymore.

The trouble with WLW and stations like it is that they have way too much sports broadcasting and in Cincinnati where the teams are often a disappointment, I get sick of hearing about things that are not important. But in the old days I had to put up with it to get to the good stuff, the news at the top and bottom of every hour and the talk radio programs that discussed the news of the day. But when Glenn Beck created The Blaze Radio Network he basically took the best of what made stations like WLW so appealing, and turned them into a full-time broadcast. Now after a few years under their belt, The Blaze Radio has become my new favorite friend providing information and content at all hours of the day all through the week. It is excellent broadcasting designed by a long time radio guy and my friend Doc starts the day off each day with hard news, humorous opinion and high quality research that comes from hours of tireless investigating.

The Blaze Radio Network is a conservative libertarian American radio network programmed by The Blaze and available via Internet streaming on SiriusXM channel 796, The Blaze’s website, its iOS app, or ClearChannel‘s iHeartRadio Website, app on iOS or Android devices, or Roku channel. It is one of the most listened to internet streams in the United States.[1]

The network also produces and operates The Blaze Radio News, the exclusive provider of news updates at the top of every programming hour on SiriusXM Patriot.

All episodes from shows on The Blaze Radio Network (with the exception of The Weekend With Joe Pags and all of the shows on Sunday) are available on-demand to listen or download at Stitcher Radio, SoundCloud, and iTunes.

On October 28, 2013, The Blaze Radio Network launched a localized radio station broadcasting The Blaze Radio Network content augmented by Philadelphia local updates like weather and traffic several times an hour. The Blaze Radio/Philly is available on the same apps mentioned above. Additionally, to promote the launch, The Blaze Radio Network was broadcast on WWIQ-FM 106.9 for the week of October 28-November 3, 2013, prior to its format change to WKVP.

The Glenn Beck Radio Program simulcasts on The Blaze Radio and many Premiere Networks affiliates. The Morning Blaze with Doc Thompson and Skip Lacombe is also syndicated to terrestrial radio on a few affiliates, mainly on the West Coast.

 

Current Lineup

Weekdays
ET End Program Host Notes Original Run
6 a.m. 9 a.m. The Morning Blaze with Doc Thompson Doc Thompson Skip LaCombe Live 2012–present
9 a.m. noon The Glenn Beck Radio Program Glenn Beck Pat Gray Stu Burguiere Live 2000–present
noon 2 p.m. The Buck Sexton Show Buck Sexton Live 2013–present
2 p.m. 5 p.m. The Jay Severin Show Jay Severin Live 2012–present
5 p.m. 7 p.m. Pat & Stu Pat Gray Stu Burguiere Pre-recorded (audio rebroadcast of Noon – 2 P.M. TV show) 2012–present

Saturdays
6 a.m. 8 a.m. The Jeff Fisher Show Jeff Fisher Live 2014–present
8 a.m. 9 a.m. Pure Opelka Mike Opelka Live 2014–present
9 a.m. noon The Glenn Beck Weekend Glenn Beck Pat Gray Stu Burguiere Pre-recorded 2014–present
noon 3 p.m. The Chris Salcedo Show Chris Salcedo Live 2013–present
3 p.m. 6 p.m. The Mike Slater Show Mike Slater Live 2014–present
6 p.m. 9 p.m. The Weekend with Joe Pags Joe “Pags” Pagliarulo Pre-recorded 2013–present

Sundays
10 a.m. 1 p.m. Wallbuilders David Barton Pre-recorded 2013–present
1 p.m. 2 p.m. Handel On The Law Bill Handel Pre-recorded 2014–present
2 p.m. 4 p.m. The Jacki Daily Show Jacki Daily Live 2015-present
4 p.m. 7 p.m. Gun Talk Radio Tom Gresham Pre-recorded 2014–present
7 p.m. 10 p.m. Hollywood 360 Carl Amari Pre-recorded 2014–present
10 p.m. 12 a.m. The Jeff Fisher Show Jeff Fisher Pre-recorded 2014–present

 

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

The magic for me of late has come from my T-Mobile account where they provide free data to my iPhone over iHeart Radio. That has turned out to be one of the greatest gifts of this modern age, because it allows me to essentially monitor The Blaze Radio all hours of the day without worrying about consuming my data. That’s important because on most days through the week I bike for about three hours a day—(bicycle). Often I am in complete dead zones in the middle of nowhere and just a few years ago there was no Internet coverage in these zones. But, T-Mobile now covers those areas so I can essentially leave my driveway and go to all the places I do for exercise listening to The Blaze Radio without a signal drop—really for the first time.

When I was a little kid I used to sit in my bunk bed and listen to the Voice of America radio all night for much the same reason—I liked hearing the thoughts of people across the world and my clunky 1970s AM radio allowed me that freedom—which has never become old to me. But now, I get the same impact off a simple miniature computer that fits in my pocket not much bigger than a credit card. So the miracle of the iPhone is not lost to me and I keep it always turned to The Blaze. I had one of those special moments the other day during sunrise. I was in the middle of a vast field of wetlands as the hint of spring was emerging from the 25 degree air with snow heavily coating the ground. A train was roaring across the plain as some ducks took to the sky in fear of the roar and I just stopped my bike to take it all in. On The Blaze Doc and his partner Skip were doing a new segment of weekly news updates and it was very funny, and informative. At that moment I took a minute to marvel at all those elements. When The Blaze Radio is playing, I feel the world is not lost off its rocker, because it connects those still having a mind with others who feel the same way and it bypasses all that ridiculous nonsense so common on other mainstream news outlets. It was a real pleasure to listen to Doc Thompson’s radio broadcast to the entire world from my bicycle in the middle of a wetland as a train roared through the early spring countryside from my iPhone. There are so many inventions that it took to make that moment possible and I thanked them all in that moment.

I am so happy to have The Blaze Radio as an option. It has become my best news friend because no matter how bad things get, they have a way of delivering the news in a way that makes nothing seem impossible. They are a beacon in the darkness where thought is still appreciated. Buck Sexton is a gift to have someone like that on the radio everyday at noon. Jay Severin comes on after Buck and he’s great too. Then of course there’s Pat and Stu who are really truly funny while at the same time being extremely informative from a critical thinking point of view. They are quite good at what they do and they can only be heard on The Blaze Radio. Everyone who loves conservative talk radio should have this station tuned in at all times. With the Internet and satellite radio options now available, there is no reason not to tune in to them. I think they are the best available now, and it is simply an amazing time that we live in where every individual no matter where they are can now have access to that station at all times.

In just 35 or so years radio technology has went from a young boy trying to angle his antenna to capture a strong signal complete with static on a battery operated AM radio to a mini computer that can pick up a broadcast from anywhere in the world in real-time without a drop in coverage and with a crisp clarity that seems even today, unfathomable. The Blaze Radio may be one of the most listened to Internet streams available, but it’s so new that its full impact has not yet been realized. It was only a few years ago that I was driving a delivery truck through the mountains of the South trying to get WLW radio in Cincinnati on the peeks—just for news updates. Now, I can just listen to The Blaze Radio and there is never a loss in broadcast quality no matter where I am on a mountain, or in the valley of a deep canyon. If you have a smart phone and access to iHeart Radio, you can get The Blaze anywhere, anytime you wish. And that is a gift unto itself that the new radio station is poised to uniquely deliver.   If I didn’t know better I would declare that the new Net Neutrality grabs from the FCC were specifically targeted at outlets like The Blaze Radio. After all, Voice of America brought down communism by broadcasting American goodness across the oceans into poor countries hampered by communism. Now, with a much smaller network The Blaze Radio is able to pipe in that same goodness over the current federal government hell-bent on liberalism and collectivist objectives. For the young minds out there still hungry to think, The Blaze Radio is food for their thoughts and is a miracle of modern science, and a necessary ingredient for the perpetuation of freedom—which starts with questions and answers contemplated over conservative talk radio the world over.

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

 

Fire Across the Galaxy: A wonderful first season of ‘Rebels’

Star Wars is about substance. The stories and my love for them trace back to my Joseph Campbell Foundation days where George Lucas was one of the original board of directors. I understand and appreciate what he has been trying to do, which I have talked about extensively in other articles. To that effect, the first season of Star Wars: Rebels is about to air as of this writing and my reason for this article is to remind you to tune into Disney XD at 9 PM Eastern time to watch it. Here is a preview of what you will see.

If you think about the themes of that episode, the Empire torturing Kanan for information about the increasing resistance from the Rebellion is a theme that harkens directly back to the end of the great Ayn Rand novel, Atlas Shrugged. In that work John Galt was tortured into compliance for his help in assisting the collective whole of civilization. It’s a mature theme intended for adults in a very grown-up story. Star Wars is obviously for kids. George Lucas is an open supporter of Barack Obama and even has his hands in Chicago politics in paving the way for his Star Wars museum on the shores of Lake Michigan. But, the content of his intentions with the expansion of Star Wars through first the San Francisco operation expansion into the Presidio, then the sale to Disney and the upcoming films is a strategy through myth that I think is excessively important.   Lucas has always been the best articulator of modern philosophy that our world currently knows. He will be remembered at the level of a Socrates, or Plato in bringing mythology, religion, and global cultural understanding to humanity in an excessively positive way. I doubt Lucas would see himself that way—but I do. History will prove me right.

Star Wars: Rebels is one of the best and most important programs on television currently. The season started off slow as it was obvious that the creative people behind the series were getting their feet wet with Star Wars without the hand of Lucas directly guiding them.   But as they completed a few episodes, it is clear that they are off to a roaring beginning to a very dramatic series. I love the show and my wife and I watch it every week. I don’t know that I’m all that excited about the new movies because I have a feeling my favorite character isn’t going to be around much longer, but I love the overall world of Star Wars because of the power it has of harnessing myth in a positive way. Star Wars: Rebels is special because it has captured that power in a way that is appealing to adults and children—it is a truly family oriented show about values.

The depth of ability that Star Wars has to reach into the nature of politics is truly amazing. The range of characters and how they interconnect allows stories to truly explore human nature from the motives of a galactic empire hell-bent on power, to a common smuggler straddling the cracks of the law to make a living the best way possible without squandering away their integrity. It’s a very dramatic portrait of competing ideas that goes well beyond the simplicity of a child’s tale.

For those who know Star Wars, which is most everyone, Darth Vader will be in tonight’s episode. If you are reading this after the date of March 2nd 2015, then this episode will be available at Star Wars.com. Vader is from the original trilogy and is actually the main character through the first six films and the entire Clone Wars animated series that went on for six seasons. Vader will be there to torture Kanan and it will be intriguing. The point of the torture is of course to coerce Kanan into revealing the location of his friends and the greater threat of a larger rebellion emerging from the senate. In a lot of ways the story lines look to be peeled away from the pages of our current history. But what’s important is that they often deal with difficult issues of extreme complexity with a joy that is openly supportive of living life as joyfully as possible.

In the episode leading up to Fire Across the Galaxy the Rebels even under great duress, managed to have a good time finding out information on where their friend and leader is being held—which is on Mustafar—which those who know Revenge of the Sith will know as the planet that made Darth Vader into who he is. Also, Bail Organa makes another appearance revealing that he has all along been the contact the Rebels have been using to get information. So there are some critical plot points that will be revealed in this episode that will serve as a nice cliffhanger to the new season that will begin in the upcoming fall of 2015.

Prior to the release of this episode my wife and I discussed my upcoming birthday and in having some fun with it this year. We spent much of the weekend playing our new favorite game Star Wars: Commander and making plans for the birthday at Dave and Busters having a Star Wars theme party centered on their new arcade game Battle Pod. Star Wars never gets tired to me; it is fun, exciting and full of interesting things to think about if the conflict at large is considered. But more than any of that, the technical achievements to tell those stories never gets old. For instance, it’s been thirty years since the film Return of the Jedi, but in Battle Pod game players gain the opportunity to fly into the second Death Star and blow it up flying the Millennium Falcon which is something I’ve always wanted to do. Battle Pod allows for that kind of experience, which is exactly how I’d want to spend my birthday with my family. I wouldn’t want to go to Dave and Busters really for anything else, but that they have a Battle Pod machine there.

Star Wars is fun, and special, so it is quite a treat to having something as unique as the episode Fire Across the Galaxy coming up on television tonight at 9 PM. If you can make time, be sure to watch it. It’s about a lot of things, but more than anything, it’s about substance. By far, it’s the best kids show on the air. But, because of the serious content underlying the story lines, and the philosophy emerging from them, it’s the best adult show also. It’s just a matter of time before the full impact will be felt. But, tonight’s episode for the uninitiated would be a great place to start. Enjoy!

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT