Tag: quantum mechanics

The Fate of the 2nd Amendment is Not for Politicians to Decide: Mental health is a function of society and must be established by culture itself

Like a clock of utmost dependability, you could hear the political cries for more gun control after the terrible synagogue shooting in Pittsburg. Liberals and the politically disengaged point to all this gun violence such as the shooting that happened recently at a Kroger in Louisville, or the attack of the innocent at the Fifth Third on Fountain Square and declare that if only we had more gun control that all these problems would go away. Honestly, I’m getting pretty tired of explaining to people who gun control or any alteration of the 2nd Amendment is not on the table, by any member of the political class. I was further enraged recently while attending a debate between Jim Renacci and the very liberal Sherrod Brown at Miami University when the subject of gun control came up that the trend of the talking points was to examine what could be done to identify people of mental health and to determine whether or not they could have guns. My thought at that moment was who determines if someone is “mentally healthy,” the same people who tried to impeach President Trump just because he won the election in 2016, or the same people who have destroyed evidence before turning it over to the F.B.I. or even the same people who lied about international incidents and attempted to create false narratives to hide their own guilt? No, the government is there to represent us and the 2nd Amendment is there to keep politicians in line, they are not our rulers, they are our doers and they don’t decide who is mentally healthy and who isn’t.

A few years ago, there was a guy suing me and we were in court when the judge motioned against him for obvious reasons. This guy was hoping to get a lot of money and his lawyer had led him to believe that his case was easily a slam dunk so this fellow had overly optimistic ideas about his fortune that were torn away from him with the discharge of a judge’s gavel. Hope turned to despair and it could be said that the guy experienced a temporary moment of mental illness. When we were both out of the court room he and his attorney were waiting for me to get to my car and he jumped me in the parking lot and we had a fight. My thoughts at that moment was that I was going to have to kill that guy because he was desperate and I’d never get a good night’s sleep while he was alive. Fortunately for that guy the police were there to break it up and the violence was diminished quickly. If I had killed him out of self-defense I would have lost my rights to the 2nd Amendment, if even for a while as the courts sorted out the case, and that wouldn’t have been fair to me in the very least.

I figured that I needed to do something proactive rather than waiting for that guy to show up at my house wanting to fight again now that he had lost the opportunity to extract a lot of money out of me. My worry was that if the violence happened, as it seemed very clear that it would that I had to do everything possible to show that I had done everything legally possible to mitigate the possibility, so I went to the court to file a restraining order. During the hearing for that they declined the request because as they said to me, it would violate his Constitutional rights to carry a gun and put unnecessary restrictions on his freedom. They determined that our fight at the court-house wasn’t enough to violate his civil liberties. I was fine with their determination and I told them that if violence did erupt that I wanted it noted that I tried to mitigate it through the court system, which they of course honored. I thought the law handled itself well in that case, but it could have easily have gone bad, especially in a more liberal part of the country. Under the proposals created by liberals especially after every mass shooting, I could have lost my rights to own firearms and so could that guy. But the courts allowed cooler heads to prevail and nobody lost such a right and within a few weeks’ sanity was restored to my attacker and everyone lived somewhat happily ever after.

Now guns mean more to me than just personal protection, they are an actual lifestyle choice. They are very much a part of my everyday life, not in the manner of killing people, but for sport. My enjoyment of those recreational activities cannot be infringed by some panicky politician looking for more power every time a lunatic decides to kill a lot of people with a gun. The problem isn’t the gun, it is in the kind of society that produces so much mental health trouble. Mental health a lot of the times is like any other kind of health, it has to be maintained and when it isn’t people fly off the rails like that loser in Pittsburg who shot up that synagogue. Hate and intolerance can’t be nurtured to the point that they drive people insane, that is a responsibility issue. I often say, not joking, that being a Democrat is a form of mental illness. That is because to believe what they do about the benefits of liberalism there has to be some insanity at play because their thoughts are counter to the role of existence itself. By my interpretation should everyone Democrat be forbidden to carry a gun because I say all Democrats are insane? Of course not. And just because I beat the crap out of someone who attacks me in a parking garage who attacked me out of desperation, should I lose my rights to own guns over something I had no part in instigating but was forced to act? Of course not.

Politicians, not a single one of them, have a right to decide whether or not we own guns. The 2nd Amendment is bigger than our entire political system, and the court system that spawns off it. The 2nd Amendment is not to be infringed period. While its true that we live in a world where mental health is historically out of control and more violence is bound to happen as a result, gun control is not a means to controlling it. As a society we have to ride out this storm while focusing on ways to improve mental health going forward. I think that would start by opening doors for ladies again and being polite to fellow members of mankind just because you pass them here and there around town. Basic civility needs to be re-established and that will go a long way to preventing all the violence that is occurring these days. But the real answer to gun violence is to have more guns present not less, to have more people armed to deal with the point of assault quicker, not waiting for the police to arrive. The way to stop mass shootings is to have a good guy with a gun there to stop the threat in seconds, not minutes. It is actually insane to insist on any other method, and until we can all agree on that basic premise, we will take no steps forward in solving the problem.

Rich Hoffman

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Having “IT”: Controlling the properties of quantum entaglment in sports, politics and business

Probably the most valuable commodity in the existence of any human being is the discovery and utilization of “It.” We always talk about “it,” we are always on the lookout for “it.” Just about everything we do as people is about “it.” Yet with all that pursuit “it” is as elusive as a slippery fish captured in the high mountains of a cold morning when most people have been camping for a week and don’t quite have their wits about them, and they lose “it” in a moments notice. We have dedicated university study to “it,” we have lots of charts and statistical data to try to capture “it” by means of thought, but those who have “it” know that it has nothing to do with anything collective society can provide through groupthink, “it” is a result of personal investment and trust in personal ability honed through a lot of practice. Having “it” is the most powerful element a person can have, more so than all the gold in the world, because by having “it” it means that the world will be beating down your door looking for attention. I’ve witnessed two times in the past several weeks that people who have had “it” were at the top of their game and from outside, “it” was easy to see. The first time was when President Trump came to Lebanon to speak. The second was in the last half of the third quarter and the entire fourth quarter of the Tampa Bay Buccaneer game against the Cincinnati Bengals at Paul Brown Stadium. Even though I am a Buc fan this article isn’t about football, but in the various mechanisms that humans find “it” and display “it” for use in the needs of life, and I’ll say up front that there is a science to “it” and it involves quantum entanglement.

I said it at halftime, the Buc’s coaching staff should have pulled the expensive quarterback Jameis Winston at half time. Watching the live game as opposed to what you see on television I could see by the body language of the other players that Winston had lost the team—he had lost “it” and people responded to him negatively. Winston had three interceptions in that game and the Bengals were winning at that point something to the effect of 34 to 16. As I said, I had been thinking a lot about “it” lately, some people have “it” and some don’t. When they do you can see “it” from across the room. In fact you can feel “it” the moment they enter a room. They don’t have to say anything, you can just tell. “it” has nothing to do with anything anybody can give you. In fact, it’s not about other people at all, it’s all about how you make other people feel that embodies the quantum entanglement that scientists can often measure at times such as mass prayers and large social events where something like an entire stadium of people are rooting for the same outcome—or are fearful of it.

Quantum entanglement is a physical phenomenon which occurs when pairs or groups of particles are generated, interact, or share spatial proximity in ways such that the quantum state of each particle cannot be described independently of the state of the others even when the particles are separated by a large distance—instead, a quantum state must be described for the system as a whole. For instance, if a particle is measured with its spin in one part of the universe in one direction, it will have an effect in the opposite way on the other side of the universe ignoring any rules of relativity. Of course, humans, really everything is made up of particles so such a phenomenon greatly influences the behavior of everything, especially human life because as a species we tend to think about such things and record their interactions as opposed to a dog or a cat that might witness such things but not have any observed thoughts on the matter. One of the ways that humans interact with quantum entanglement is in the act of prayer, which has been scientifically studied by physicist to measure the activity of particles under such conditions of mass human concentration. The implicit belief is that when a large group of people pray, they are having an effect on particles on the other side of the universe or vice versa, they are asking something somewhere to spin particles in a positive way in the here and now even if that something is on the other side of the universe, or perhaps beyond it. That is why we can “feel” moments of elation in certain locations such as churches or places of great historical significance. The manipulation of particles can often reside even across the layers of time and space so the quantum entanglement is still being affected even when thousands of years have passed, the particles of that area may still be reacting to something that is happening elsewhere at a great distance.

For instance, Paul Brown Stadium was built to participate in sports activity which is ultimately concerned with quantum entanglements. As human beings we don’t quite understand why we are interested in these kinds of things, only that we are obsessed with the results, so we design sports as a way to capture, “it.” “It” being the positive manipulation of particles in the direction of our desires to influence the outcome of events we might be invested in. The momentum of the football game was heavily in the favor of the Cincinnati Bengals and the crowd in the stands was dancing happily with the result. Obviously, the players could feel it, and it was working great for the Bengals and the body language of the Buccaneers said they were feeling the weight of it. The game of Jameis Winston showed it. At the start of the season he had to endure a four-game suspension for grabbing the breast of a young woman. The Bucs started the season with backup quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick and they had great success. By the time Winston came back the team did not respond well to him. When talking about “it” we must always talk about the unique qualities of leadership. Winston had lost the team during that suspension. He made too much money to sit on the sidelines so the Buc’s management put him in ahead of Fitzpatrick, but the rest of the team just couldn’t feel the magic of his leadership, and it really showed in the game against the Bengals when I was able to observe it live. The moment that the Buc’s pulled Winston from the game the body language changed completely with the Buc’s players, both on offense and defense and they nearly won the game. A last-minute field goal by the Bengals took away a miracle comeback but the observations of quantum entanglement within that stadium on that particular day in October in Cincinnati, Ohio was unquestionable. The game wasn’t a fight to put points on the board which is how human beings often measure success for failure, it was a fight over quantum entanglement. I would go so far to say that the entire invention of such games was to touch the effects of quantum entanglement and to uncover elements of “it” within our society in predictable circumstances—to evoke “it” under controlled thought experiments such as a screaming crowd between the game times of any given Sunday at 1 PM to 4 PM.

In Lebanon, Ohio I posed the suggestion to my daughter who attended the President Trump rally to thousands of people willing to stand in the cold and rain to hear him give the same speech over and over again that there was a lot more to Trump than anybody credited him with. People were showing up to this event to be in proximity to the positive quantum entanglement that the President has become a master of utilizing. If ever there was a person who had “it” it was President Trump. When he arrived, the place erupted into an intense greeting as if a rockstar had showed up. Trump purposely took the stage slowly making eye contact with as many people as possible and when he looked at you, you could feel the energy. We often accept such behavior in musical performances, but here was Donald Trump with just his voice, no instrument, no song to sing, just him to evoke in people such emotion. Trump understood the necessities of leadership and they were on full display and ultimately that was why Republicans suddenly were cool, because as the new leader of the party Trump was influencing the quantum entanglement of existence itself. A person can be said to have “it” when they can evoke such emotions in mass groups of people. Whether its President Trump or Ryan Fitzpatrick the nature of leadership is in having “it” and “it” is the ability to evoke the particles that interact with other people and influence them in ways that lead to success. That is done by either influencing them in the here or now or manipulating them on the far side of the universe, but when it is happening, that is when we say that someone has “it.”

I usually stick around at these big events and that was certainly the case at the Bengal game and the Trump rally. I watch people leave until there is nothing but empty seats. I do this because I like to track the influence of “it.” In Lebanon the venue that Trump had spoke in the meaning of the evening was gone the moment Trump and all the spectators had left the area. “It” was gone so it wasn’t the place that created the excitement. It was the people, the audience reacting to Trump who was able to evoke in them a quantum entanglement of particles that made them feel positive toward the outcome. I did the same at Paul Brown Stadium, I waited until everyone was gone and it was clear that “it” had left too. The circumstances of quantum entanglement were not evoked by the place itself, “it” came from the players on the field and the spectators that either rooted for or against their intentions on the field of play. The whole game was an artificial rendering of quantum entanglement meant to discover “it” within a framework of entertainment but for the very serious need that humans have to touch such greatness that truly is an element of the universe that has great power.

Of course, on a more serious note we deal with “it” every day, or in the cases of most people, the lack of “it.” Successful business people know how to utilize “it” at will. People scratching at success pray for “it” and sometimes by random happenstance they get “it” even if only for a short period of time. They might call it luck but I call it the successful manipulation in a positive manner the utilization of quantum entanglement. Whether it’s in successful business transaction, politics or sports, we can see “it” happening all the time. But controlling “It” is the obsession that we humans have with quantum entanglement and using the mysterious particles of the quantum realm to our advantage as tools of implementation.

Rich Hoffman

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Jim Renacci Destroyed Sherrod Brown in the Final Debate of 2018: Sheree Paolello and Miami University helped make history

If the third and final debate between Jim Renacci and long time Senator Sherrod Brown were a fist fight the liberal would have found his face ripped off and the ring mopped with his blood by the Republican challenger for the election that is taking place on November 6th, 2018. It wasn’t even close, Jim Renacci was very good in that debate even at one point using his accounting skills on the stage to add up Brown’s lobby money to make a point about how the senator had become one of the biggest lobby recipients on the Hill. After watching all the debates, this one was clearly the best one as it was held on the campus of Miami University in their Hall Auditorium to a ruckus crowd that was divided down the middle with Brown supporters on one side, and Renacci supporters on the other. Sheree Paolello along with her Channel 5 partners did a fantastic job with the entire event, I was very impressed with her handling of the crowd and managing the clock. She let Renacci and Brown duke it out on stage without too much clock trouble while letting the audience lightly engage in the debate before commanding their sentiments playfully, but firmly from the stage and bringing everything to a close on time, on national television. I’m a bit of a sucker for competence and I go to a lot of these things, and this one was certainly one of the best run events that I had ever witnessed. Sheree deserves a lot of credit for her fine balance of professionalism and playfulness to really bring out on stage who the two men really were as candidates and that certainly worked to the favor of Jim Renacci.

The tickets for the event were split with Sherrod Brown supporters on the left side of the large room facing the stage and Renacci supporters on the right. There was an upper deck in the hall that had people there as well, and of course those are the type of liberals that activate and always show up at these events to make Democrats look like a larger sampling of society. But this time the Republican had a lot of people of their own. There were more people for Brown which wasn’t surprising for a campus event. Additionally, it was raining and there was a long line to get into the building through security, so for a Friday night to fill a large auditorium on a college campus in the pouring cold rain of a late October in 2018 I was very surprised to find myself surrounded with a very energized crowd for Jim Renacci. It looked to me that the Democrat radicals who obviously showed up to out shout conservatives as they could were shocked as well to find a resistance to their usual antics. At the end of the debate as I show in the video I posted on Twitter, that crowd was certainly different from similar events—the battle lines that ran through our national politics were certainly on full display.

But during the event itself Jim Renacci showed a large range of skills, everything from humor to satirical wit, he kept Sherrod Brown bouncing around on his heels all evening. Brown had a few good lines, but most of the debate he was forced to react to Renacci by attempting to use the same tired old liberal talking points about the environment, growing the economy from the inside out, and attacking banks. Renacci the former accountant and extremely successful businessman was just too much for Brown. It was really a battle between an achiever in Renacci and a Marxist theorist who has tried for three decades to make that vision into a reality and failed time and time again in Brown. The liberals following Brown clearly weren’t used to conservatives having such a good candidate in Renacci supported by such an aggressive crowd of supporters and backed by such a successful President Trump. Jim Renacci was handpicked for this job of incoming senator to give the White House more help on the Hill with the Trump agenda and that clearly exposed a new political wrinkle that Democrats just weren’t prepared for.

Of course, the topic of Brown’s domestic violence problems came up and Renacci handled it particularly well. Brown did what he has been doing to defer the issue by saying that Renacci should be ashamed of himself for even bringing it up. But it was a question from the moderator and Renacci had to answer the question accurately. It was after all Sherrod Brown who tried to keep Brett Kavanaugh out of the Supreme Court by picking the testimony of abuse articulated unsubstantiated by Dr. Ford recently who set a standard of conduct for which he couldn’t live up to. So it was a fair question and all Brown could do was say that various newspapers in the state of Ohio wanted Renacci to stop bringing up the issue. Well, liberal newspapers in the bag for Democrats don’t make the rules—they can decide to cover Republicans and Democrats differently, which they certainly do. If a Republican tried to get away with Sherrod Brown’s answer to the domestic violence question, they would have been ran off the stage, but the media is more than willing to give a free pass to Democrats every time. But Renacci kept the complicated matter on point and exposed the hypocrisy very well. By Sherrod Brown’s own rules that were thrown at Brett Kavanaugh just a few weeks ago, Brown must step down out of the race. His refusal to do so takes away all the merit of his argument against Kavanaugh, which isn’t surprising. Democrats like Sherrod Brown are used to saying one thing and doing another. They glue the whole thing together every time with emotions from their supporters who show up at these events and shout down the other side into shame, but not this time. This time the conservative had a rowdy crowd of their own and once the liberals started breaking the rules of the evening with their frequent outbursts, Renacci’s crowd started doing the same. Security had to move up into the room to threaten to remove provocateurs several times, and at the end things did get a little out of control from the audience perspective. Somehow Sheree Paolello kept the whole thing on the tracks and under those conditions Jim Renacci just shined. Brown obviously wasn’t prepared and lost the debate handedly.

It was a beautiful night to be out on the very nice campus of Miami University. I wish that truly colleges were places that they were intended to be, places of thought and discussion. After the debate the university put on a nice meet and greet out in the lobby which was designed to facilitate good discussion between everyone with some nice beverages and food offerings. It reminded me that colleges were intended to serve a positive function in society among thoughtful people, even though that has not been the reality. They have instead emerged as cesspools of liberalism, but on my way back to the car under the steady rain soaking my suit tight against my skin on a cold night, I felt like the national dialogue had advanced properly. It wasn’t just because my guy won the debate and that liberals were challenged for a change by members of the #MEGA movement, but it was the campus itself showing a turn for the better in these early years of a new century toward what should have always been. And that is truly what Making America Great Again is all about—and on that debate night Channel 5 and the University of Miami played their part in what will soon become history—and the world is better off for it.

Rich Hoffman

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Democrats Are a Form of Mental Illness: Richard Cordray and Sherrod Brown are perfect examples

Richard Cordray is just as bad, all liberals are within the Democrat party, but Sherrod Brown during his debate with Jim Renacci over this past weekend epitomized the flawed nature of their party’s belief in economic theory. It was astonishing to hear one of the most liberal senators from the Hill describe his economic vision which mirrors that of the equally liberal Richard Cordray. Brown described this bizarre theory that you grow economic opportunity from the middle out, as in this insulting “middle class” that he keeps talking about. Doesn’t he realize how insulting that description is? Who wants in their life to just be a middle-class voter? Not many people, most people have dreams and hopes of being something better and the American capitalist system is designed to give them a chance, and even those who fall short add fuel to the economic engine that is the greatest that the world has ever produced. But this notion that government manages economies and deals fairness to everyone is just ridiculous. Yet you could see that Sherrod Brown believed that bit of insanity with everything he had in him. If you could sum up Sherrod Brown’s opinion of his challenger Jim Renacci it was that the Republican was an accomplished millionaire before he ever entered public office and as a liberal Brown can’t stand successful people. He hates them. The same could be said of the liberal hatred of Donald Trump, they hate him because he’s a self-made man who is part of the top 1%.

All the liberal talking points whether it be Medicaid expansion, higher taxes to pay for government healthcare, more money for unionized government schools, higher taxes for the climate change cult, no matter how much you go down the list of liberal beliefs is this bizarre notion that liberals like Sherrod Brown and Richard Cordray can be trusted managing the affairs of government when they have a hard time trusting people with their own freedom. And when people become wealthy it isn’t because of any form of self-initiation, it has to be because they cheated somewhere, because that’s all they understand about human nature. Democrats function from a mistrust in basic human nature because they know they can’t be trusted themselves.

Most Democrats, actually all that I’ve ever known, have some psychological problem and they seek the protection of group affiliations to hide their flaws from the world through collectivist notions. They cannot connect reality to their fantasies always looking for ways to fulfil action by collective association. If only everyone had government healthcare, then suddenly everything would work out and could be magically paid for. They have a natural distrust in private markets because to them everything has to be managed by a class of people, and those in the middle-class are perpetually inclined to need leaders to guide them through life because they can’t think for themselves. Therefor, how can a free market approach to healthcare be viable? Yet that is the only way to bring down the cost of healthcare, through competition and getting out of the making people sick business. Of course, the pharmaceutical lobby in Washington D.C. wants people like Richard Cordray and Sherrod Brown to push for government healthcare because that would give them a guaranteed market for their drugs. What Renacci and Trump are talking about are actual open markets that drive down prices through competition, such as the corrective eye surgery example that Jim Renacci brought up during a debate with Sherrod Brown. A surgical procedure that used to cost many thousands of dollars now costs a few hundred because of the competition involved in that field of endeavor. The same approach could be taken regarding everything in healthcare. If you understand the science, there is no reason for bodies to break down. Aging can be turned off and ultimately people could become productive workers well into their hundreds. People don’t need to die in their 80s. Everything in a human body is fixable, including cancer. The entire healthcare debate is a fake emergency meant to solidify political power and keep people stuck in a middle-class for which Democrats have traditionally controlled through political mechanisms.

The reason is that Democrats do not trust people to make good decisions on their own, because the people who end up becoming liberal have problems of their own and can’t understand how a free market of anything could possibly work. They can’t trust themselves with money, the opposite sex, or matters of thought so how can they understand how a free market could determine winners and losers? If the government isn’t there to determine fairness, how can life be fair? That is the essence of their basic problem and it effects everything they do in life. And when they have to deal with someone like a Jim Renacci, a self-built person, they have only hatred in their dealings with them because the wealthy are functioning from a set of rules that the typical Democrat has no knowledge of.

And while the Democrats do have their wealthy contributors, you can understand them through the same method. Those types of people are Democrats either because they feel guilt about their wealth and don’t really understand why they have it while others don’t, or they know exactly why they have it and they don’t want any competitors, so they look to government to keep people from being rivals in their industries. Just because people are wealthy it doesn’t mean they understand economics, sometimes people just get lucky and are in the right place at the right time. But largely, people like Jim Renacci and Donald Trump became wealthy because they became better in a field over their rivals and to the liberal mind that is something that just isn’t natural. Nobody could possibly be better than anybody else because economies are grown from the middle out, instead of the top down.

Yet history is not on their side on this matter. Everything happens from the top down. Nothing occurs from the inside out, its not possible. Something has to always come from something. Something never comes from nothing. Sherrod Brown’s middle-class musings are pure fantasy, the workers do not make jobs, employers do. Someone makes something and the effect of that creation trickles down into the structure of society. Therefore, economies are grown always from the top down, never from the middle out. Never. Any economist that says otherwise is scamming you, even if they say such a thing from our most prestigious universities. Such a thought is pure fantasy and is not conducive to any kind of reality.

Yet here we are looking at grown men running for the Governor of Ohio and a long-time sitting Senator in Cordray and Brown who has the economic IQ of a four-year-old. I would say they were just stupid if it wasn’t a common theme of the people from their party believing the same things. So we have to accept that the problem is a brand of psychosis specific to the type of people who become Democrats. They are broken people fearful of their own shadows and who lack self-discipline in even basic matters, and they can only function in life if someone helps them. And most of us would look at such people and desire to help them, but we should not be obligated to putting them in power, so they can have influence over our lives. Just because they are broken people doesn’t mean the rest of us have to cripple ourselves to make them feel better. And that is ultimately what Richard Cordray and Sherrod Brown are asking of us in Ohio, to cripple our minds, our economy, and our happiness to allow them to feel equal to the rest of us. And to build up some “middle-class” that they can feel they rule over, just to make them feel useful. No, that’s not a wise thing to do, and we should stop doing it. If they need mental help, let’s talk about giving Democrats proper treatment for their mental limitations. But when it comes to the ballot box, we owe it to ourselves to vote those losers out of office—at the very least.

Rich Hoffman

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The Murder of Jamal Khashoggi and Domestic Violance Case of Sherrod Brown: Understanding the media agenda on big news stories

So who cares if Jamal Khashoggi went to pieces, literally. The former Muslim Brotherhood reporter for the Washington Post disappeared in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey several weeks ago and after being pressed on it his murder had been admitted to. Immediately 18 Saudis connected to the situation were arrested and the Crowned Prince has denied direct involvement, but who cares? It’s very strange that with all the violence in the world that this particular story has been front page news all week. I mean nobody wants to see people being killed, but don’t be naïve, it happens everywhere all the time. Why would this one guy, who has been buddies with Osama bin Laden and is certainly not a friend to peace in the world, be so important? Well, part of the answer comes from an article published Friday just ahead of the Saudi admission to the murder shown below. The only reason that anybody cares about Jamul Khashoggi is that he was a reporter, and reporters want to believe that they are part of a ruling class that has some immunity to the violence of the world, that they can cover stories without actually being connected to them, and without fear of becoming the story itself such as Jamal did.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/conservatives-mount-a-whisper-campaign-smearing-khashoggi-in-defense-of-trump/ar-BBOA6kY?ocid=spartandhp

Yet there is something even more fishy about this story of murder that has taken the world’s imagination by storm. Reporters knew a lot about it early in the process even down to the grotesque details of the torture of Khashoggi finger by finger as his body was cut up into little pieces and taken off site for who knows what next. And reporters have personally made President Trump connected to the story as if he had something to do with the actual murder himself by his friendly association with the Crowned Prince of Saudi Arabia. It was Turkish officials from Istanbul who leaked the story of Khashoggi’s dismemberment while his fiancé Hatice Cengiz waited over four hours outside before finally raising the alarm. There was a price on the head of the anti-reformist reporter who was at odds with the regime of the Crowned Prince’s administration, that is the number one purchaser of American military equipment in the world. Saudi Arabia is also the number one ally against the aggression of Iran and the efforts of Israel, so Jamal Khastoggi was hardly just another beat reporter covering news stories in the Middle East. He was an activist and he wanted to marry Cengiz, so he was there to pick up the papers that would allow him to do so, but he never came back out. He had walked into a place he knew would be dangerous for him almost daring his rivals to take action, and they did. So how is it President Trump’s problem?

This is a very similar story to the one that is taking place in Ohio where Sherrod Brown is a three-term senator that suddenly finds himself under scrutiny for domestic violence that occurred early in his life, but under the #METOO movement is suddenly a problem for him. Only the media doesn’t want to touch the story because they want Brown to win the election against his challenger Jim Renacci. The media is willing to put on blinders to the actions of a Democrat but if it involved a Republican, the story would be plastered all over the news. In the case of Sherrod Brown, the obvious bias is clear which makes it relevant to this murder story of Jamul Khashoggi. The media isn’t just reporting news, they are trying to make it.

What the media as an entity is trying to do is cause a disruption between the relationship President Trump has with Saudi Arabia ahead of the November elections hoping that the economy will be torpedoed and voters will be angry with Trump instead of enamored with him which will help with this mythical “blue wave” they keep talking about, which is turning out to be a mere ripple in a kid’s pool. Gas prices are low going into the election and people are enjoying the benefits of a very strong economy, and Saudi Arabia plays their part by keeping prices on barrels of oil low. They also help by keeping Iran on their heels bringing a period of peace to the Middle East that is unprecedented. But nobody has illusions that all the elements of the world are a kid’s game. To maintain that level of peace in one of the most hostile regions anywhere violence does occur—often.

The media is certainly fanning the flames of this murder to hurt President Trump and to put him in a position that would cause harm to the relationship he has with the Saudis. Trump has made great ground around the world eliminating threats and befriending just about everyone, and the media can’t stand it, because they want violence and turmoil. They want North Korea testing nuclear weapons, not thinking of building condos on their beaches. They want Iran strong and powerful, not withering under the feet of a U.S. backed Saudi Arabia. The media as an organization doesn’t want a successful President Trump, they want stories of discontent and rebellion so that they can inspire a socialist takeover of the American capitalist system. They want the midterms to knock Trump out of power and they will do anything to achieve it, even if it causes an international incident.

We often say on the conservative side of things that The Washington Post is the official blog of Jeff Bezos who is very much an anti-Trump activist. Jamal Khashoggi did some work for The Washington Post so his politics fell very much on the side of the average radical reporter that has been beating on president Trump since his inauguration. None of these reporters are interested in just reporting the news as it happens, they are activists employed by news organizations taking big liberal money to reshape the world. We aren’t talking about freedom of the press here, we are talking about aggressive action to overthrow regimes and inspire Marxist ideas to destabilize entire regions, if not the entire world. Trump and the Saudis are the enemy to such strategies, so the media is using the death of this Jamal Khashoggi as a sacrificial lamb to the media’s greater cause.

So what should President Trump do, or the United States for that matter? Well, the big picture must always stay in focus. Khashoggi, the Washington Post, CNN and many others pushing this story of murder were anti-Israel, pro Iran radicals who need to understand what kind of game we are playing here. In that game sometimes if you go into the consulate of a sovereign nation you have been provoking, you don’t come out, even if your soon to be wife is waiting outside. That’s just the way the ball bounces. And nobody should be afraid to say that, because it’s the truth. We aren’t playing patty cake here; the world is a dangerous place and the media isn’t interested in peace. They are trying to stage an overthrow of power on many levels by hiding behind their press passes and using the justification of their cowardice to declare a freedom of the press. The evidence is quite clear, we can see such massive coordination on easy cases like the Sherrod Brown situation in Ohio, where the media work well together to bury a story so they can achieve a greater political objective. Yet on something more obscure such as this case with Jamal Khashoggi, the pattern of behavior is just as predictable. Nobody in the media cares about the dismembered body of a murdered member of the Muslim Brotherhood and Washington Post reporter. All they care about is stopping Donald Trump any way possible. And if they can cause an international incident to derail the confidence of the President with allies he has worked hard to build—for which are helping fuel a great American economy, then so be it. They don’t care how many people die so long as the media gets their revolution of Marxist ideas out into the public, and that is the real truth behind this dangerous matter.

If I were President Trump I wouldn’t send sanctions to Saudi Arabia, I’d send them something better, a gift to show how strong our friendship still is, like maybe a free subscription to Amazon Prime. Or a poster of Jeff Bezos to hang on their palace wall. Because let’s face it, the world is at war. This won’t be the last death. What matters is that the right-side wins, and this time around, the Saudis are helping America bring stability to the Middle East. And if being friends with them makes that happen, then we shouldn’t let some little issue like this Khashoggi murder stop anything. And we should stand by those who are willing to do the dirty work where the rest of us would rather not be.

And while we are waiting for the body of this Washington Post reporter to turn up, remember, we are still waiting to see the body of Osama bin Landen.  We were told to just trust the Obama administration about the burial.  How is this any different?

Rich Hoffman

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The Trump Strategy: Changing the way politics is conducted forever

It was different this last time, when President Trump visited the Warren County Fairgrounds to deliver a speech in favor of several GOP candidates that were on the ballot for November 2018’s midterms. I’ve seen Trump in person a few times since he had been elected president in 2016 but this campaign rally at the very unusual building on the fairgrounds site provided an almost cinematic appeal as if some Hollywood production designer had brought all these strange elements together for the benefit of the story than just happenstance. It was a Friday night in the historic town of Lebanon, Ohio and it was lightly raining, with a snow mix falling with the raindrops and President Trump was stoking the minds of thousands of people who had packed into every available spot to listen to him give essentially the same speech over and over again. But nobody cared, they were happy to be there and didn’t seem to ever want the event to end. For this particular venue I had a really fantastic seat, one just outside the television cameras and on a high perch so I could see everything that was going on. I could even see the president arrive and leave from behind the show’s façade and for me it was perfect because it facilitated my high thoughts on the matter with great conductivity.

In the short run the threat was real, Republican voters needed to hit the voting booths and support the candidates that Trump was speaking for. But from my perspective a lot had changed since the last rally I attended at U.S. Bank Arena in October of 2016 and this one in Lebanon in October of 2018. For the first time in my lifetime Republicans had a good, positive brand and they had a President who could sell it. Trump has actually changed the way campaigns work—he has changed the rules of the game itself into something that Democrats will not be able to follow. They don’t have the energy or the message leaving Trump in command of the political process for what will turn out to be the first half of the 21st Century.

I think it’s quite amazing that Donald Trump is willing to attend so many rallies across the country in order to build a team that he can work with in 2019 on the legislative side. He’s almost acting like a college coach recruiting star athletes for a football team. The tireless work he has been willing to put into the effort is truly stunning for anybody. And that effort showed in the event organization and even the crowd. There was a lot to complain about. During the speech some people actually passed out and needed medical help. But the show went on as the medical staff gathered up the sick and took them away to be cared for. And nobody complained. The Secret Service didn’t overact. The crowd wasn’t overly dramatic, and Trump never even paused. The show just went on and everyone was focused on the success of the evening.

There is no way for the two sides of politics, the liberal view and the conservative view to work out differences between each other for a sustainable republic. The two sides are not equal, they do not have shared values to build a foundation of friendship from. In the Republican Party that has been the problem from the beginning, if there were any compromises that had to be made it was always from the Republicans because they were always the only side functioning from value to barter with. Liberals were all for the abandonment of values, so they never gave anything up and that left Republican supporters always feeling shortchanged. But now there some wins under Trump’s belt and there was more to this rally because the foundations of success were there to talk about, as opposed to just a bunch of theories from two years prior. Now there was a track record and the obvious view of many more things that could be accomplished. And the Democrats had nothing to offer but complaints and emotional desires to be considered equally important. Trump’s Republican Party was willing to stick its head up out of the ground and to actually emerge into the light of day unafraid and be pace setters and that is something you don’t see every day.

Yet the show itself was very slick, the volunteers were enthusiastic and the base of support was willing to do their part and show up at each of these rallies a whole day before just to get a good place in line. While people waited volunteers handed out swag to the audience all of it well-managed and constructed. The sheer logistics to pull off one of these shows by the support staff is quite staggering. What was involved for just the Lebanon event was enough to impress, but the very next night Trump was in Richmond, Kentucky doing nearly the same thing with a lightly modified speech. Trump had done several rallies during that week in different parts of the country all of them just as complex and with similar people willing to brave the elements and waiting times to attend. In the case of Lebanon, I noticed later that the local media markets were very happy with the Trump visit, they gave him great coverage for at least two days before and after. Trump’s changes to campaigning gave local media the two things they always wanted, so the coverage turned out to be fair and positive. First were the traffic shutdowns, the news loves to talk about traffic jams and the President’s motorcade shut down traffic during rush hour all the way from downtown Cincinnati to Lebanon, Ohio over 30 miles to the north. Then the second things were the feel-good stories about how the positive rallies made people feel to be near a sitting president. I could see a brilliance in Trump’s strategy that was always there for anybody to attempt, but now Trump has made it a Republican method.

And that brought the whole thing to a kind of grand fortissimo, the difference between Republicans and Democrats fundamentally. Democrats were essentially seeking to ride the Vico cycle into the future, the endless cycle of human endeavor going from theocracy, to aristocracy, to democracy then to anarchy only to return over and over again to the beginning. Republicans however are the opposite, they are about human pro-growth and continued expansion into the future. Democrats are the hippies of Woodstock while the Republicans are the scientists trying to expand mankind’s reach to the moon. The vision from each party is not conducive and are at odds with each other and a choice has to be made. We can’t have it both ways. For me personally, I’ve always been a pro-growth guy. It makes me very sad to think that all the work we’ve done through art, literature and engineering would be tossed away only to dig at the ground like a pathetic primitive and not understand the complexities of the universe. But until Trump, Republicans didn’t know how to sell a pro-growth agenda, so the plight of the primitives dominated politics leaving Republicans to chase after. But now those roles have been reversed and it looks like a great opportunity is unfolding in front of us, and at the center of it is the remarkable Manhattan builder himself who has a pro-growth message that people can finally relate to. And the effect is obvious, and lasting. It’s a very exciting time indeed.

Rich Hoffman

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Jeff Bezos and His $15 An Hour Minimum Wage at Amazon: American workers have Donald J. Trump to thank and nobody else

Before anybody takes credit for Jeff Bezos of Amazon starting the initiative to pay all his employees a minimum of $15 per hour, we have to get a few things straight. It must be remembered that all this time, through all the Obama years, and the Bush years Jeff Bezos as the new richest man in the world thought he had the economy figured out. Nobody in their right mind—except for maybe me—thought that the American economy would ever see more than 4% GDP growth again. Those same people never thought unemployment would dip down to 3% in America either—because the manufacturing jobs had left the continent forever. That meant that if you had a job in the United States, that you should feel lucky that your employer paid you whatever they could. Bezos the big liberal thought he could use that situation to his advantage and hold his wages down to build his company into one of the most successful in the entire world—which he did. But like a typical Scooby Doo villain from that classic Hanna Barbera cartoon, Bezos found himself thwarted by the election of Donald Trump. Trump from the perspective of liberals who wanted to hold down the American economy and push business overseas to impoverished regions, like China and Africa, was going to make America great again, and that meant the economy was coming back and that jobs were going to bloom like flowers on a spring in the Midwest, and that places like Amazon were suddenly going to have to fight to keep their workforces intact if they wanted to maintain their global market dominance as a retail supplier.

Bernie Sanders and his Seattle socialists may want to credit themselves for putting pressure on Amazon to change their ways and move their minimum wage to the $15 an hour that has been demanded by those left leaning radicals. Tucker Carlson from Fox News has done much the same ironically, but it wasn’t any of those groups that pushed Bezos into the abyss, it was market competition. It’s what Donald Trump had been saying all through the campaign of 2016 when he said he wanted to be the greatest jobs president in the history of the world, this is what he meant. By lowering the unemployment rate it forces competition between companies for the best workers, and Amazon looked at how things were shaping up and he didn’t want to put his company at risk with high turnover from a strong American market, so he had to compromise. That is why he decided to make the move he did. It was because of President Trump. The number of $15 an hour is simply to try to appease the socialists who have been screaming for that wage level for a long time. Bezos probably figures that it will give him a competitive advantage over other employers for a while to set such a high minimum wage.

But don’t think for a second that Bezos had been rooting for Donald Trump to be successful, in fact the Amazon leader has been doing everything he could to destroy the Trump presidency before something like this very strong economy became a fact. Like many big corporations who long ago accepted the Bush-era New World Order where the United Nations would take over the management of human affairs, they put their bets in that corner and all their company assets then here comes Donald Trump talking about undoing it all. So of course, they got caught flat-footed after his election, and of course they wanted to defend themselves. But then again, they never should have bet against America in the first place. They had not just bet a few horses on the great race of politics, but they had bet the whole family farm and now they have to find a way to survive as Trump’s economy is poised to be the worlds most powerful for the foreseeable future.

I keep hearing about how patient the Chinese are and how superior they are to American strategies. Well, if they are so good, why do they have to steal all our intellectual material to attempt to compete? The truth is that the Chinese are not so great, they are a communist country filled with people who have individually been crushed. They are a society that has lost their individual imaginations and surrendered them to a collective consciousness. That makes them great workers, but not so great in the realm of thinking. So as a country they can only thrive if the rest of the world is artificially held down, as they had been during the last three American presidents, until Trump put a stop to the practice. Now that the big tech companies like Apple have to deal with jobs coming back to America—which was not on any consultant’s list of objectives in the near future, the strategy of everything has to change and workers can thank Donald J. Trump for that, and the people who have supported him. I can say that I knew all along what would happen if an American president had created an “America First” policy. But nobody was listening, so I put my support early on behind Donald Trump for this very reason, that by strengthening the economy all other troubles would suddenly be manageable around the world.

When a big, giant company like Amazon has to make concessions to keep their employees, especially when Bezos fought so hard to eliminate that competition by backing policies that would help destroy the American economy for a more global view, you can then know that America as a superpower has a new day to enjoy. But this time there aren’t any other superpowers to compete with because virtually every other country in the world has invested into this global scheme which suddenly has no value. It is a fascinating problem to observe. But nobody deserves credit for what Bezos has done but Donald Trump. Trump has won and fulfilled his promises and the average American worker is seeing the direct benefits, not just from the tax cuts, but in wage growth.

When people say that the tax cuts were for the rich, this is how they were wrong. Tax cuts for corporations and the upper crust wealthy has kept them in America. By staying in America, they now have to compete with all other industries for the same jobs. That means the average worker can demand more income as a result, it’s the basic law of supply and demand. Business owners were able to absorb those additional costs because of the tax cuts. Do you see now the magic dear reader? It’s basic economics 101—the kind of stuff you get in the first week of your first year of college economics. Yet nobody was following the rules but the billionaire from Queens, New York. He knew the obvious and was bold enough to stick to the formula and now the benefits are there for everyone to enjoy, except for the richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos. In the end if you can’t beat them, you join them, and that is how Trump is uniting the world—by being the best and forcing even the most reluctant to join him at the party. And the people who benefit most is the American worker.

I don’t like Jeff Bezos in a political way.  But I do love him as a visionary.  Welcome to the Trump Club, Jeff!

Rich Hoffman

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Jim Renacci is a Really Great Guy: If 2nd Amendment supporters voted for him, he’d beat Sherrod Brown easily

Every time I have met Jim Renacci I have grown to like him more and more. Usually it’s the opposite effect, the more you get to know someone, the more you find that their little flaws start depreciating your opinion of them. But not Jim Renacci. He has grown on me in a very positive way and I find that when he leaves back to wherever he needs to go next that I actually want to spend more time around him. Even saying all that nice stuff I was very impressed that he came up to me at a fire pit where we were having some fabulous hamburgers fresh off the grill at Premier Shooting and Training Center to shake my hand and talk to me a bit. It was a casual event with only a few hundred people around, most of them were running for office of some kind, but because the event was a 2nd Amendment celebration Jim Renacci flew all the way out from Washington D.C. to attend. At the end of the night he flew back, so he was only around for a few hours, and part of that he came over and stood around the fire with my family enjoying a brief moment of correspondence. Just hours before he was all over Fox Business talking about the Kavanaugh hearings and he was still wearing the same suit, not having time to change. After talking to my family and a few other people he gave the short speech seen below, then went back to the airport.

I’ve known a lot of politicians and it has only been recently where I have found that I like some of them personally. The reason is that we have all emerged into this current circumstance together but doing different things to help restore our republic, so we have that in common to build relationships off of. Ten to fifteen years ago I was not into the group of politicians that were around back then. I was not a John Boehner guy or a supporter of most of the trustees and commissioners. But that has changed quite a lot over the last decade as the Tea Party movement forced an evaluation at the Central Committee level that was hard-fought and heavily debated. Then Donald Trump was elected, and that certainly created a philosophic shift that made the event at Premier Shooting uniquely special. It has also cleared the decks for Jim Renacci to run for some of these big seats as a genuinely good man as opposed to just another political hack. That is why I enjoyed talking so much to Jim Renacci. He’s just a good person.

But as Jim said about his fight with Sherrod Brown, even though Sherrod Brown has been working the state of Ohio for decades as an elected representative and is favored to win his senate seat back that Jim Renacci is challenging him for, Brown could easily lose if only the 2nd Amendment supporters of Ohio came out and voted for Renacci. You can forget about the union vote, you can forget about all the radical Democrat protestors, you can forget about all the supporters of Sherrod Brown—if just the 2nd Amendment people showed up on election day to vote for Jim Renacci he would win easily. So why not make that happen?

Jim Renacci could have easily have said of the Premier Shooting event that he had been too busy to attend. He wasn’t even in town. He had every reason in the world not to come really, but because he respects the 2nd Amendment so much, he took time out of his very busy day to fly back to Ohio and spend some time with a small crowd at a gun range. It occurred to me as he came by to see me personally that if he was willing to go through all that trouble, why in the hell wouldn’t 2nd Amendment enthusiasts be willing to go to the polls and vote on election night? Its not asking too much. If they did, Jim Renacci would easily beat Sherrod Brown and Donald Trump would have one more senator to work with on the Hill. Ironically, the same held true in every district where the races between Republicans and Democrats were tight. The difference maker could really be gun supporters who pushed candidates over the top for Trump.

In the great book on strategy, The Art of War, the basic premise is that most conflicts are won before anybody ever takes the battlefield. In many ways the only reason Sherrod Brown has won all these many times is because voter turnout is low. People are often busy with other things, so they aren’t interested in voting. But when it comes to values, Jim Renacci represents far more people in Ohio than Sherrod Brown. Democrats learned a long time ago that they best way to leverage conditions as a minority in their direction is to frustrate voters into believing that no matter what they do, elections will keep solutions out of the reach of everyday people. The focus then becomes an us versus them on every issue, such as the 2nd Amendment where we are always afraid that the liberals are going to come after our guns, so we put our defenses in the places where they desire, not where they would serve us best. But really, all we need to do as gun supporters is to put our efforts behind a candidate like Jim Renacci and the gun grabbing from the political left would be over. It really is that simple. Too simple for people to believe, but that is the situation.

As I said, Jim Renacci is just a good person, I have enjoyed getting to know him a bit and if there is any justice in this world, he will beat Sherrod Brown in the upcoming election. But given the amount of gun owners and supporters that there is in Ohio there really isn’t any reason that there should be an “if.” We have the power to make Jim Renacci’s election a “when,” with an easy win against Sherrod Brown. Gun owners and 2nd Amendment supporters far outnumber all other activist groups. The biggest weakness is that conservatives and gun enthusiasts tend to be very individually based, they don’t march in herds like Democrats do, so that makes them harder to organize for voting purposes. But if they could only do that one little thing and show up to vote for Jim Renacci and all the other Republicans on their ticket they would not only preserve their gun rights from the radicalism of the gun grabbing left, but they could advance those rights in productive ways. And all they need to do for that to happen would be to realize that they easily outnumber their opposition, and to just take care of business at the ballot box. There is no reason to worry about gun grabbers going from door to door to take our guns when the conflict can be ended right here and now with a simple—bloodless election. The only thing holding 2nd Amendment supporters back is the knowledge that the power to win all these elections is truly in their hands. All they have to do is use it.

Rich Hoffman

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The Great Debate for the Ohio 52nd House Seat: Winning, losing, and the game of politics

Killing the opposition with kindness is a viable political strategy and it was used by Kathy Wyenandt when she helped get the Lakota levy of 2013 passed, which increased property taxes dramatically in Liberty and West Chester Townships in Butler County Ohio–part of what is the 52nd District for which she is now running against George Lang for that House seat. Back then I advised against it but in the three previous levy attempts for which I directly ran, the no voters won. But a large part of the business community that was with me on trying to fight high taxes wanted to get along with the people on the pro levy side for which Kathy Wyenandt had been tasked to get passed after a fourth attempt. If everyone had listened to me, the levy would have been defeated, but to Kathy’s credit, she changed the behavior of her opposition and she managed to squeak out a 1% margin of victory, which was just enough to give Lakota teachers the big pay increase they had been looking for pushing their average pay well up and over $75K per year. And she was back to that same strategy in her debate with George Lang which was held at the Miami University Learning Center at the VOA Park on Tuesday the 25th of 2018. What follows is video coverage of that debate for voters to use to make their decisions.

As I have said before, I’m a George Lang supporter. Needless to say I think George is the far better candidate for the 52nd House Seat which he currently holds. I could caution him about playing nice with Kathy Wyenandt because it only helps her. But given the way this debate went, I don’t think he has anything to worry about. Essentially the best case Wyenandt made for herself during the debate was to say “I helped pass the 2013 levy at Lakota which cost property owners a lot of money in increased taxes and I want to go to Columbus to help fix it.” When it comes to all the other issues that go on in the 52nd District she wasn’t very interested. Clearly her passion was education. But on all other matters she wasn’t up to speed. So George’s seat is not in jeopardy. He still needs to campaign and do the work because Kathy is a competitor. But she just isn’t ready for a seat like the 52nd in Columbus.

But I did find that I liked Kathy Wyenandt. She knows that her personality is one of her best assets and after speaking with her after the debate for a good bit of time it was clear to me that she wasn’t a hole in her head Democrat. She is someone I could work with and maybe when this whole thing is over maybe we can tackle that school funding issue in Columbus on behalf of all of Ohio. I recently had a nice talk with Jenni Logan the treasurer at Lakota, and at this debate had similar good talks with Linda O’Conner and Ann Becker who like Kathy all want to solve problems. With the minds involved I think it might just be possible to tackle this school funding problem utilizing George Lang’s 52nd House Seat. The elements are all there for some sharp people to finally solve that issue and I think we might be able to do that.

But as I explained to Kathy when she asked me what I thought we needed to do to solve the school funding problem I of course said what I always have, that teachers are making too much money and we need to establish a per pupil education cost that Ohio can allocate funds to before we could ever begin to solve the problem at the state level. Just like any business, sure we can pay teachers six figures if that’s what we decide but what percentage can a school have of such expensive teachers. And to what effect if any does tenure play—does it help or hurt the education process—those are the real questions. But just asking Ohio property owners for a blank check for education isn’t ever going to get the job done. There are a lot of assessments that labor unions don’t want to deal with and no politician wants to touch the issue, so that is why Ohio has an unconstitutional school funding system. That is the conditional situation. I think the way to fix it would be for non-politicians to sponsor the fix and let the politicians write the bill by tagging on later. After Kathy is done with this campaign maybe we could work something out. I’d be open to putting up a bunch of ideas on a white board like we would in any business problem and see where it takes us.

As far as politics go, and she and I talked about this too, her approach is that people are sick and tired of politics as usual, that they want civility in their public officials. I would argue no. Let me put this in a way everyone can relate to. Everyone knows I love the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and they were on Monday Night Football this week playing the Pittsburg Steelers. I was so mad in that game that I nearly threw my television out the front window of my house. The Bucs almost won, but not enough and it disgusted me to no end to see the Buc players shaking hands with the Steeler players after the game, because I was so angry that I wanted to see someone punching someone out, to reflect my feelings on the matter. Politics is a lot like sports in our culture, for better or worse. Trump certainly understands that. If you want to rally people to your cause you must get them aligned with primitive emotion. Playing nice only helps the underdog who can only hope to keep a close race and that voter turnout will be in their favor. To win elections however, you have to make sure voters will show up to vote for your cause, and to do that you have to get them excited in the same way they might be driven to watch a sports game like football. In the end one side wins and one side loses. Monday night Steelers fans were elated that they held their slim lead until the end of the game. Bucs fans were devastated. I almost threw my $5000 television out the window in full rage. Does this kind of thing help the political discourse and solve problems? Well, I’d argue yes, because in politics you must have fundraisers and people like to bet on winners in the great horse races. And you must have majority parties in power for the cooperation of a republic to work right. It’s nice to think that people will be voted in and vote their hearts, but so long as the political philosophies of Americans are so different, party rule will be the primary strategy of determining policy, and of picking winners and losers. Until all Americans have a unified philosophy they can all agree on, politics will be another sport that people pick a side and root for.

I finished my conversation with Kathy Wyenandt saying that she didn’t sound like a liberal, she likes seeing money-making ideas evolve, so she’s not anti-business by any measure. She explained that she was conservative about most things but socially she leaned liberal. I find that’s the case with a lot of moms, the job of parenting especially for females evokes a lot of empathy. But empathy isn’t always the best way to solve problems either. Being able to understand the position of someone else isn’t always required to solve a problem, it can in fact be a hindrance. But I found it difficult to not like Kathy Wyenandt. I’m sure she will do great things if she continues to want to involve herself in public life. But I have the feeling she might be more effective free of public constraints. It takes all kinds of people to make things happen on a big scale, and as far as her passion goes to education, that is a big issue. But it’s certainly just one that concerns the 52nd District of one of Ohio’s richest areas.

All in all the debate was a good one, it showed two nice people running for the same position. George Lang has lots of experience and is battle hardened for life in Columbus where the not so nice side of politics is always present. And George knows how to navigate those dangers and still get things done. He’s very resilient without becoming pessimistic. He doesn’t worry about being all things to all people, he generally just does his best and it usually keeps him always on top. Kathy is another matter, while in this race her strategy is good in not wanting to draw blood in the campaign against George, and running as a liberal conservative in Butler County trying to be the nice person people can vote for, the reality is that her approach would be decimated in Columbus. I admired her ambition, but she needs a few steps to get there. I caught parts of her personality while we were talking that said she wouldn’t be so happy with the game of politics that are required to run an important House seat. Its one thing to say the system is corrupt, but it became that way for a reason—because under it all is the sport of politics itself. I myself have a hard time shaking hands with people I compete against, especially so soon after a big game. And in politics you have to do that kind of thing every day. I help where I can due to my temperament. I know what I’m good at and I put my efforts there. I think Kathy has a lot of that in her too. A school levy is one thing, it’s a single point issue that evokes great emotion in one side against the other. But running for a House seat involves lots of layers of politics and issues that are always changing, and it takes a certain kind of person to tackle those kinds of things. One thing that I learned from the debate was that George Lang was certainly the one who should be in that 52nd District seat in Columbus. But I also learned that I liked Kathy Wyenandt and that perhaps she may get what she wants done for schools done better outside the parameters of public office. Perhaps after this election a new journey will unfold, and it just might bring together people who were former enemies for a whole new challenge that would certainly be worth the undertaking.

Rich Hoffman

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Why Sherrod Brown is Worried: Jim Renacci and Trump are winning in Ohio leaving Democrats flat on ideas

Sherrod Brown has a big problem, and by watching this MSNBC interview with Chris Mathews, to his credit, he knows it and understands it. But as a very liberal Democrat Brown fundamentally doesn’t understand wealth creation, and that only 1% of the population in any society have the stomach for it, which is why they tend to possess more wealth. Working people is a classification created by the Democratic Party to exploit for political gain a jealousy toward job creators that began with the philosophy of Karl Marx. But in America such distinctions aren’t relevant and when the Republicans can distinct themselves as champions of the average worker and the job creators, the Democrats don’t have any real leverage politically to stand which makes this interview interesting because it is discussed in an intelligent way. Brown understands how the battlefield is lining up and it’s not to his advantage. Like he said in this Mathews interview, typically in that state of Ohio that leans red, Democrats win offices by out working their opponents. But that isn’t going to work with Jim Renacci who is running against Sherrod Brown for his long-held senate seat. Renacci works hard and he understands job creators and he respects workers, and he’s competitive. That makes this fight between Brown and Renacci a game changer for all future politics.

I hate even referring to people who would rather have a simpler life punching a pay check rather than doing the 60 to 90 hours it takes to be a job maker as “working people” but that is how they have been defined by politics. It takes all kinds of people to make strong economies and to utilize the miracles of capitalism, but for the sake of politics we have to use the terms that have been created to bunch us all into voters that can be counted on to pull the lever for various members of party politics. The great thing about Trump is that nobody in politics has done more for working people than Donald Trump, he has brought back jobs that left and he has put money in the pockets of job creators to help those jobs take roots again, and Sherrod Brown finds himself standing against both issues. Brown was against the tax cuts that Trump managed to get the Republican Party to back—which would have otherwise been consumed on socialist programs Sherrod Brown supports. Because of those tax cuts for what Democrats call the 1% investments have been made to bring jobs back from other countries and establish them once again in America meaning that for the first time in well over a decade, perhaps two, job wanted signs are now populating our communities with opportunities.

Speaking from personal experience there are quite a few very good workers who had been sitting jobless for a long time and being forced to take a government check because of the lack of options and they can now get a job and earn their money for themselves, which they like. This is a recent development, since the tax cuts essentially. Trump policies are responsible for both opportunities, the jobs coming back and the investment capital to get them rolling again leaving Sherrod Brown and his work with the liberalized John Kasich out of the process. All that Brown could manage with Kasich who made deals for his own presidential run was to expand government services to more people imprisoning them to more dependency, rather than the honor of self-reliance.

With Jim Renacci running against Brown as Trump’s hand-picked candidate, it essentially throws the Trump White House behind Renacci who is himself a very hard worker in much the way Trump has been. When Mathews pointed out the Real Clear Politics polling that showed Brown with a comfortable lead, Brown pointed out the poll I mentioned a few days ago where he was only up by four. That is not where Democrats want to be, up against a hardworking, and honest Republican, with the national backing of a president who has put his name next to Renacci and is personally responsible for bringing back the opportunities Ohio voters are seeing. Trump beat Hillary Clinton in Ohio by 8% in 2016, so it wasn’t even close. Sherrod Brown is to the political left of Hillary Clinton so in a statewide election this time, even if the Republican challenger was terrible, Brown would likely struggle. But with a good candidate, like Renacci is, Brown is in real danger which is obviously very sobering.

The war of identity politics has expired with the election of Donald Trump and the Democrats are simply flat footed to deal with it. You can even see it in local races like the one in Butler County, Ohio where State Representative for the 52nd District George Lang has a Democrat challenging him for his seat in Kathy Wyenandt. Because Butler County is one of the most conservative counties in Ohio she has to run to the right of her comfort level, but the socialist nature of her party puts her in the same position as Sherrod Brown. People before politics is what she says, but what does that mean? There are all kinds of people. The 1% types who are job creators are people too, and they need workers to fill their factories. And the workers need the 1% types to make jobs for them to punch a time clock in to make some product that can then contribute to the economy. So where does that leave liberals like Kathy Wyenandt and Sherrod Brown in these days of the Trump economy? The entire Democratic platform has gambled that the Mueller investigation would erase Trump off the map by the midterms, and that hasn’t happened. That has put John Kerry out front as a potential presidential candidate to start panicking and calling Trump names as the frustration is starting to build. Not even the liberal hero Bob Woodward has stopped Trump with the latest hit book. Nothing has stopped Trump and his supporters especially in Ohio.

What has changed from now and then in 2016 in Ohio was that the Republican Party was ran by John Kasich. Now, Trump has taken over as the state leader and many of the big names of the Republican Party like Warren Davidson, Jim Renacci, and George Lang are all affiliated with the Trump presidency. If an election were held today in Ohio Trump would beat any Democrat by even more than he beat Hillary Clinton. And why, Trump has given both the worker and the job creator their pride back and cut the strings of regulation letting both do what they do best. All Sherrod Brown has managed to do was to attempt to put more people on government assistance, which for many is a disheartening thing to do. Lazy people of course don’t mind welfare, but people who can’t find a good job hate it, because they’d rather earn their own way of life than to wait for a government check to show up in the mailbox. Brown worked with the liberalized John Kasich to expand Medicaid, which is another outdated health maintenance model that could be radically altered with decentralized health care. And with those two loser positions as the only success Sherrod Brown can put his name to, he has a lot of reasons to worry.

Rich Hoffman
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