D23 Reveals the new Star Wars Land: Where science and technology meets mythology and imagination

I’ve been saying it for quite a long time and for fun you should go back and read what I first said about this topic way back in October of 2012—but this year at the D23 Expo in Anaheim, California Disney finally unveiled their elaborate plans for Star Wars Land. The immense impact that I think this has on the human race is incalculable. It’s not just another revenue stream for Disney’s massive media company, it is a launching point for new ways in thinking about mankind’s role in the cosmos and it is a jaw dropping culmination of imagination, engineering and philosophical debate all splashed down into a reality created from myth to be shaped by minds into an actual future. What they revealed to me at D23 exceeded my expectations by a lot and it is certainly worth talking about.

I remember when I was a kid what it was like to ride the submarine at Disney World way back in the early 80s for the 20 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea exhibit. It was I thought really well done. I loved that Jules Verne classic both in novelization and the Disney film and it was very fascinating to me as a young pre-teen to see that ship in some scale that represented reality. To be up close to it, to touch it, to ride inside it as it went slightly under water was something I’ll never forget. And that was the case for much of Disney World back then, I had seen all these movies and at the early days of the Disney World’s Magic Kingdom before even the Epcot Center was built really launched me into adult pursuits mixed with adventure, a very detailed love of engineering, entrepreneurship, and literacy. Even though I knew the exhibits were not real it always fascinated me to the level that Disney Imagineering was able to simulate what the imagination could create and apply real engineering marvel to those creations taking our minds from conception to reality.

I’ve always loved Star Wars maybe more because of how the movies were made than in what the stories actually said. Most of my youth I watched and read of how my favorite movies were made and Star Wars filled my mind with technical details of how simple things were made into big things to make those films appear to be set in a galaxy far, far away a long time ago. Largely, Star Wars was shaped by the Imagineering at Disney World because what they were able to do early on at Disney was carried directly into the production of Star Wars so the enormous market potential created by Disney Imagineering is really incalculable. It is extremely difficult to know how deeply our modern society has been affected by just the very rudimentary exposure that we’ve seen in technology from 1970 until the present. So by applying the same trajectory of thought, what they have been exploring in “Imagineering” at Disney over just the last decade is truly uncharted ground. There are literally millions of young people inspired into the sciences by their experiences at these amusement parks.

When Universal Studios did their multipark Harry Potter experience I knew that we were unlocking a whole new theme park experience. If Disney World set the stage for how these theme parks took movie magic and made them into a reality then Universal Studios took things to the next level and what they did in Orlando at Universal Studios with the literature of Harry Potter, first from the books then to the movie experience was just phenomenal, and it continues to be. A visit to Universal Studios in Orlando is a trip into the imaginary worlds that Jules Verne and H.G. Wells could have never comprehended as a reality for young people. And if you visit the NASA complex at the Kennedy Space Center you’ll quickly see how much reverence they have for the author Jules Verne. The book From the Earth to the Moon framed early engineers and scientists at NASA and the rocket program before the space agency was created, into flying to the moon. The human imagination is a very powerful tool and many of the products we see today are a direct result of our ability to think then make those imaginings into some sort of reality.

Well, Star Wars went several steps further in what had previously been done with imaginative thinking and once Disney acquired the property I had a feeling they would do something with Star Wars that would put it on a grand scale. And now, at D23, they have shown us the model of what they are building—a 14 acre deep dive into the depths of extreme imagination. The Disney Imagineers have been given a free hand to create something with Lucasfilm that will take visitors not only into the films that are so popular, but into a story they can then invest in themselves. These Disney people weren’t just trying to duplicate some memorable events from the movies but they are going several steps further—and what they are coming up with will have explosive results on our human population. I can only imagine what impact it will have on young minds visiting these Star Wars Lands in both Anaheim, and Orlando by having their minds ignited toward careers spawned from that experience.

You have to remember dear reader that while all this Star Wars stuff is going on at Disney, in new movies, theme park worlds and video games, NASA has been given the green light to return to space working with the private industry. President Trump literally wants to return to the moon just a year after Disney opens up this new Star Wars Land—so space is going to be on everyone’s minds very soon. I can say that I’m presently looking at what role I can play in this new space race as a grown adult. There will be opportunities to build hotels and factories in space, on the Moon and on Mars over the next twenty years so for me as an adult it will be very fun, and stimulating to visit Star Wars Land and bridge reality to what the imagination has come up with there. The idea of space ports interacting with many different species coming together over a vast galaxy is a strong philosophic concept that must be reconciled before actual science takes us to those places—and as the news of these phenomenal events begin to fill our basic reality soon, these fantastic theme parks are literally going to inspire us in ways that From the Earth to the Moon couldn’t. I don’t think these Star Wars Lands are just for fun and excess—I think they will actually advance our technology and science by inspiring young people in ways that we’ve never experienced as a species thus far in our evolution.

I always enjoy the news that comes out of D23 and other science and fantasy conventions whether the topics are theme parks or from Fantasy Flight Games where our imaginations are stretched out for comprehension of new ideas massaged in brand new ways. But this year is quite different. If you combine the science and imagination of what Disney has been planning now for over five years—from when I first wrote about this story—with the optimism of the Trump presidency—we are talking about some very special days ahead for us all. Even those who don’t think much of the Star Wars movies will find that the basic spill over of that fantasy will flow directly into our science of tomorrow—and THAT is a very exciting prospect that leaves me hungry for each new day and what might be revealed yet to come.

Rich Hoffman

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The Innocence of Don Jr.: Why everyone should love the Trump family

Of course Donald Trump Jr. met with a person who claimed to have dirt on the candidate running against his father in the 2016 election. I’ve met with lots of people over the years under very similar conditions, so I can completely understand how many such meetings would be needed while running for president of the United States. Back then the Russian story which has been made up by the media to attempt to slow down the winner of the election from implementing tax reform, a repeal of Obamacare and the enforcement of immigration policies, wasn’t even a consideration. Back then it was unclear if Republicans would even get behind Trump at the convention so Don Jr was looking for a deal closer to unite the party around his father. Makes perfect sense. It was a nothing meeting, he acknowledged as much then he moved on. The media hoping to distract the senate from the healthcare debate however pounced on this story with everything they had during the weeks after the 4^th of July one year later as President Trump was having great success both overseas and domestically. They keyed on the Don Jr. story with great ferocity. But in so doing they have exposed themselves yet again.

The meeting between Loretta Lynch and former President Clinton that took place secretly at an Arizona tarmac occurred even more recently than the meeting Trump Jr. had with the Russian lawyer so it’s certainly still relevant. If the Trump case is a mandate for so much investigation and discussion then the Lynch case is enough to fill libraries of books on such matters, because that one is much, much more serious. Here you had the investigating attorney general at the Justice Department meeting with the husband of a candidate for president of the United States who was under investigation by the FBI for mishandling classified information. After the meeting James Comey clearly was called away from any incrimination into Hillary Clinton by his boss—Lorretta Lynch, giving Clinton a free pass to continue her presidential run without worrying about going to jail. The Democratic Party rallied behind the cause and defended all the parties involved culminating in one of the most contentious runs for president that we’ve ever seen in America. Even with all the effort and scheming involved the Democrats still lost to Trump deflating them terribly. They had gone all in—even to the point of breaking the law on several occasions—at the highest level—and they still came up empty.

In May and June of 2017 Comey revealed to a Senate committee that Loretta Lynch had put pressure on him to alter his investigative prerogatives. Once that information was revealed first in May, then made more elaborate in June, Trump fired Comey just a few days later of that May testimony. Obviously crimes were committed by Loretta Lynch and Comey played along with it taking this case to a much higher level than anybody ever anticipated. The crimes are quite serious and still pending as the nation struggles to wrap their minds around such majestic travesty. Because for a lot of good people, all this is just too much to comprehend. Great evil often hides behind unbelievable acts of bad conduct—and that is what we see so often in regards to the Hillary Clinton campaign and those who supported her, from Loretta Lynch to the basic protectors of the swamp from both parties in the House and Senate.

https://twitter.com/overmanwarrior/status/885670963307847681

We were told that all these crimes the Democrats committed were misunderstandings, and were at best conspiracy theories—yet when a much less act committed by Don Jr was revealed it was portrayed literally as the end of the political world. Do you see what’s cooking here dear reader? Don Jr. is completely innocent in this case and was functioning in the best interest of his father—who won the presidency fair and square. Trump was the better pick and the Democrats essentially lost because they had nobody to run against him. It was they who picked a woman who was under FBI investigation and had flubbed up a lot in her years of elected office. They hung their hats to her star and they lost big. And they have only themselves to blame.

But there is something else at work behind the Don Jr. case that is worth mentioning. There is a reason that President Trump is doing such a great job in spite of all these aggressive tactics. And if anybody wanted to discover why they’d go back and re-read some of the books that Donald Trump wrote over the years. For a person who is supposedly not very smart according to the political left, Trump has written more bestselling books and had a span of one of the most successful television shows in the history of entertainment in America. He knows a thing or two, and that’s not even how he became a billionaire. President Trump is and has always been that I can see, a person who not only wanted to be personally successful, but he wanted to inspire others to do the same. For a good example of this just read his book Think Like a Champion. Trump has been offering ways to improve the lives of everyday people most all of his life, and he’s used himself as a motivating factor to drive people toward success. But to the truly lazy and shallow minded they look at the targets Trump has set out there even before becoming president and they hate him because they are essentially too lazy to do the work. They hate Trump because the president asks them to do a little work just to be good people and this extends back through the years to their core dislike of Donald Trump to begin with. They don’t want to work hard. They just want to get by through life doing the bare minimum at everything. You don’t find too many Democrats who are fundamentally hard-working people. The philosophy of hard work and political mentality just don’t align.

This is the EXACT reason they viciously attack our family! They can't stand that we are extremely close and will ALWAYS support each other. https://t.co/1f7JqxScMr

— Eric Trump (@EricTrump) July 11, 2017

Making matters worse, Trump has a nice family. Don Jr., Eric, Ivanka and the rest of the kids are nice people. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Eric at an event once and he was a sincerely nice young man. You don’t get the feeling that they are the kind of billionaire caricatures made up by the media to represent Mr. Burns from The Simpsons which are overbearing and intolerant billionaires out of touch with everyday people. The Trumps are everyday people in America and for years they have tried to share that experience with the rest of the country teaching them to also be successful. There is nothing pretentious about them. I think it took Donald Trump a while to figure out the right balance and as a result he went through a few marriages—but once he got it right, everything clicked into place for him. In a lot of ways I would give Melania Trump the credit for really bringing that family together—but regardless—they are good people who serve as the first family to the world marvelously well. Show me anybody anywhere in American culture better—because I’d bet you couldn’t. Trump has it going on every level and the Democrats can’t compete. All they can do is complain and try to stop the inevitable.

I liked the Trump family before they were the First Family. But after all they’ve endured I actually have a love for them. These are great people from the President all the way through to his 12-year-old son Barron. Melania has been fantastic in her role—in every phase and the kids are all just fabulous. I am proud that they represent our country—especially overseas. When Ivanka sat in for her dad for a short time at the G20 I thought she looked and acted just wonderfully competent. No complaints at all from me. But it is truly scary to think what would have happened if with all the law breaking the Democrats managed to get their person elected. That would not have been good. In that regard, I wouldn’t care if Don Jr. met with 100s of Russian lawyers to keep those Democratic idiots out of the White House. Because it would have been worth it. However, that wasn’t necessary. The Trumps won fair and square and it’s time for the political left to either get over it, or leave for a country more aligned with their insurrectionists ideologies. Because with the Trumps, good things are coming whether the Democrats are ready or not.

Rich Hoffman

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Donald Trump’s Tomorrowland: Making “Failure’s Not An Option” great again!

I kept looking for it but have yet to see any news really covering what Donald Trump’s administration has been doing in regard to American space exploration. It was only just before July 4^th 2017 that Trump signed an executive order reactivating the National Space Council at NASA and making Mike Pence the is the chairman of the board. Then just a few days after that great American Holiday Mike Pence was giving a speech at the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center announcing that the first meeting of the new council would before summer ended. It was a big speech with grand national appeal but it was eclipsed behind Trump’s G20 visit and the first face to face meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. The news media was completely consumed with the news of this oversea visit and the antics of Trump’s combat with the various news organizations—so they missed the announcements about America’s new role in space that sounded much more spectacular than when Kennedy gave in his famous challenge ahead of the Apollo program in the 60s. Trump was thinking bigger—much bigger and Mike Pence is about to make his mark as a very strong VP in the vastness of space.

As Trump and Pence were unleashing space once again the Wall Street Journal had a very interesting article which was quite familiar to me, that “smart medicine” was in fact the wave of the future and ultimate cure to illness on earth. And to what effect? We don’t need to get sick as humans and die of old age—we can fix all that now and until very, very recently–publications like the Wall Street Journal were not covering those regenerative technologies. I bring it up here because space exploration takes time and the best way to embark on such an adventure is to live the amount of time that Noah did from the Bible, to see many years of development to and from the vastness of space and to colonize the once unthinkable. We’ll want every human being and more available today for such adventures. There were so many magnificent quotes given in Trump’s speech then Pence’s speech at the Kennedy Space Center to be played back to history for many years. I thought many of those quotes were better than when Kennedy made his famous challenge to the American people when he announced that he intended to put man on the moon within a decade. In case you haven’t heard, Trump wants to do that by 2020. Trump then wants to be on Mars by 2024. Those are ambitious goals for a space agency that has literally been turned off to study climate science and Islamic contributions to science. Trump’s commitment to space is actually astonishing and will carry with it a new era in adventure, science, philosophy and politics.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-smart-medicine-solution-to-the-health-care-crisis-1499443449

I haven’t been down to our family retreat at Cape Canaveral for a few years now. I have often spoken glowingly about my visits there to my favorite beach in the world, Cocoa Beach and the many famous landmarks that evolved in the wake of the space program at NASA. From our condo we can see the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center. My kids are especially in love with the place and have watched several launches from that four story balcony. They were there to see the last Space Shuttle mission return home under the Obama administration and they have recently seen the Space X rocket tests and have been enthusiastic about it still. But they don’t know it like I do—where Space Shuttles seemed to take off every month and we were on a fast track to life outside of earth. I love the optimism of space, the promise not only of adventure but of new discoveries and opportunities, such as mining Helium-3 off the moon for real nuclear power. There is great talk now of going to Mars in weeks not just months which of course would allow us to mine the moons of Jupiter and even Saturn realistically and carry our civilization toward a Type 1 classification—where we master our solar system for resources to advance our technology. Having that promise ripped away by the Obama administration and other previous presidents has been extremely disheartening.

It was my fault; back when my kids were getting more home school from my wife and I than anything they learned in ten years of school I took my children on a very special trip to Florida to visit the Kennedy Space Center then directly to Disney’s Epcot center. The entire trip was focused on science and technology showing them the possibilities that were in front of their lives. That was in 2003, George W. Bush was in the White House and I really thought he was serious about returning America back to the moon. So I took my kids to the family condo at Cape Canaveral and let them meet astronauts at the Space Center and literally turned their imaginations loose. Since then there really hasn’t been any ambition for space by virtually anybody. This has been reflected in a few very forward-looking movies, like Tomorrowland based on the Disney attraction at Magic Kingdom and the very good Christopher Nolan movie, Intersteller. I was very surprised to learn from my oldest daughter that her favorite movie so far in her life is Intersteller. It made me a little sad because it was I who planted those seeds so long ago and in her life nothing had so far came from it. So many kids in her generation have had their minds turned off and now they look at the world inwardly instead of outwardly. Their vision is small because they have their faces pressed into the feces of their own existence and that folly is literally destroying mankind with remarkable swiftness. And bright thinkers like my daughters—ignited by an overly optimistic dad have seen little to match that zeal from their generation. When Trump said that in the vastness of space many of our problems would seem small—he’s right. The solution to much that sickens us as a species will be solved in space and in the journey of mastering it.

It was during that trip that I bought a t-shirt from the NASA shop stating “Failure is not an option” which was the classic line from the Apollo 13 mission that was made into a movie by the great movie director, Ron Howard. I wore it everywhere because it matched my optimism for everything. Anyone who deals with me knows that this is my basic philosophy. Failure is never an option for me—and never has been. It is kind of an innate instinct that I have always had, but the space program in America framed the spirit in a way I have always fed from. It was quite remarkable to wear that shirt to Epcot Center the next day with my kids asking questions and taking them to Tomorrowland to see all the optimism contained there for our future. Even though my kids were impressed, I was frustrated because I felt we could be doing so much more as a country—but from the very top—in the White House we lacked vision and the great dreamers had been grounded, seemingly on purpose.

If you’ve ever been through a NADCAP audit dear reader you’ll understand what I’m talking about. For many decades now government has imposed so many rules and regulations onto the aerospace industry that we’ve stifled creativity and brave innovations with so much bureaucratic red tape that the love for adventure that used to be present even in engineers has been stuffed into a bottle and sealed up tight. The days where World War II fighter pilots were the test pilots and advisors for NASA are over—they have been replaced by pin headed politicians and paper pushers whose only adventure in life is to decide who will make the coffee run to Starbucks. The industry bureaucrats have replaced the type of horse sense innovation that actually invented space travel with static manufacturing plans designed to take the thinking away from production leaving us all with a cold—dead work environment of people disconnected from the passion that can be garnered from being a part of the industry. Aerospace today from the top to the bottom look for reasons not to do things than in how to do them because the regulatory zeal placed upon it by government has crushed the desire to achieve things. The good news of Trump’s commitment to space means so much more than just going back to the moon—it means uncovering that American spirit that put us there in the first place and going back to what worked—and allowing young people to dream of a work culture that stated “Failure is Not an Option” and spent every last breath of their lives articulating that type of thinking.

It was as if there were a cloud of negativity that has taken over the world and until Trump unleashed his big ideas that cloud has been in full rebellion. It doesn’t want Trump to succeed in these quests and it has been so thick that even the magnanimity of the two speeches done after the 4^th of July 2017 by first the President then the Vice President down at Kennedy Space Center that nobody heard about these events. They were probably the most important news stories of the week, yet nobody covered them—not even Fox News. Even supporters of Trump’s administration like Jessie Watters and Eric Boiling didn’t make a mention of these bold speeches on their coverage that I could see watching them through the following weekend—the news was all about CNN’s fake news coverage and the G20 Summit. Nothing about America’s new commitment to space or the wonderful science that will come from it—we are talking about a new dawn for the human race while the attention is on keeping our heads in the waste of our lives by cowardly bureaucrats who want to keep our feet firmly in concrete sealed to the shallow history of European stagnation.

Everyone should have seen this coming, after all Trump is all about thinking big, and by the time he is done our previous visits to space will seem like distant history—not to be forgotten, but certainly not the focus of future visits of people to the Kennedy Space Center. Based on what Mike Pence said, Cape Canaveral is poised to be a true space port where private sector and government truly work properly toward the goal of expanding mankind into the vast cosmos above our heads. Instead of saying “remember that” we will be making t-shirts of what was just said in a board room off in the corner of the Vehicle Assembly Building as some engineering problem revealed major headaches for everyone. It is in the thrill of overcoming those obstacles that the adventure of space happens—not from the losers who throw their hands up in because the word “the” is placed in the wrong place in a manufacturing plan.

But that those plans will be written once more as discovery happens and innovation dictates light feet and an indomitable spirit. Yes, Trump’s commitment to space is the best thing to happen in America over many years and I am proud once again of our space program. It won’t take long to see the results even though at this point very few people are talking about it. Soon however, that won’t be the case. It will prove to be one of the biggest things to have ever happened to the human race and its happening right now. And not a moment too soon! We’ve needed this, and now Donald Trump is starting that train of successes in science moving again and the results will be positive for every single human being on planet earth—and that’s not an understatement.

Rich Hoffman

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Critics of the Ark Encounter and the Trump Presidency: A collision of east and western thought

While doing a little research on the Ark Encounter for an article reporting my recent visit there I ran across a number of really disturbing trends which correlate perfectly to the Trump presidency. It’s no secret that evangelicals supported Donald Trump massively in the last election and that they would continue to be a solidifying electorate base—so obviously the criticism leveled at the type of evangelicals who were behind the Ark Encounter project were the same who wanted to end the Trump presidency with bizarre conspiracy theories and constant small-minded thinking—especially in the example below from the lunatic making fun of not only the Ark Encounter, but the type of people who live in Kentucky. What we are seeing is a classic battle between traditionalists and the progressives from the coastal territories and the urban viewpoints that their culture is superior from a European mindset, contains all the arrogance which articulates our current crises in America—and they are of course dead wrong.

I am not a “young earth” believer and I see many flaws in the foundation beliefs of the Ark Encounter presentation. I watched with great effort the great debate at the Ark Encounter between Bill Nye, the Science Guy and the amusement park’s founder, Ken Ham. My view is that both were functioning from a mythic perspective represented by their two foundational philosophies. I admired Ken Ham’s passion and his beliefs even though I think there is more evidence that is needed to tell the story. After all, my father-in-law is a geology professor and I have many friends around the world who are archaeologists, historians, and paleontologists and many of the sciences they are working on is showing that earthly civilizations are much older than 6000 years, that human societies are millions of years old and that a Vico cycle has dominated human thought for many cycles over that time for which the Noah story is all but the most recent one. But I also reserve the right that everyone might be wrong and that evidence may come forward that shines light in a totally new direction—so from my perspective the stories of these cultures—including our present one provide some of the best insight that we have to work with and serves as a proper starting point for any discussion. But with Bill Nye—he’s clearly functioning from the European Marxism which has crippled western civilization from the start and the foundation of his entire premise is rooted in global warming being the dominate threat of all mankind. So as radical as he wants to make Ken Ham out to be for the Ark Encounter’s “young earth” debates both sides are essentially arguing over basic religious views. The modern progressive is proposing a new religion in earth worship to correct obvious flaws in their traditional thinking and to do that they have to eliminate people like Ken Ham from the discussion to make their own pieces of thought fit and that is why they are so hostile.

I think the Ark Encounter is actually a wonderful place to provoke actual philosophic debate that is badly needed. I compared it to not only the movie Jurassic Park, but also the Universal Studios attraction which is based on hard science but has many fictional elements added to psychologically tell a story our human minds need to deal with, real philosophical challenges provided by DNA manipulation and other modern concerns, There is incredible value in that particular modern mythology that cannot be taken factually, but as part of an immersive story. The Ark Encounter’s value is not in its factual elements—whether Noah built the Ark in 2200 BC and that once all the waters of the world receded from the Biblical flood the vessel ended up on top of Mt Ararat in Turkey. It’s in the study of good and evil and how decisions on the furtherance of mankind should be articulated in relation to the primal actions of biological urges. Should human beings allow themselves to be basic primal organisms eating, drinking, and procreating as a blob of cellular activity or should human thinking exceed biological necessity? As primal as many might blame Ken Ham’s evangelical perspective it is actually the basic foundation which asks the question of mankind—shouldn’t we be more than just a biological mechanism of earth’s many life forms? If mankind is actually unique in that spectrum and has a special place in a universe created by God on the sixth day of a grand construction project—than shouldn’t we act on an elevated platform? Such discussion are meant for the temples of the world but at the Ark Encounter Ken Ham has actually revisited the great debates known to Greek society back into the modern world and the effect is quite dramatic—and valuable. Scholarship shouldn’t be afraid of the truth—because in debating these things, we learn a lot about ourselves and our positions. The real value isn’t always in the facts which are hard to know when evidence is slow to emerge from science—but the stories that are told contain elements of a hidden truth that our psychology requires to behold advanced concepts beyond the primal necessity of our biological requirements.

As sophisticated as Bill Nye’s reliance on actual science might appear his basic premise is that we live, we die, we leave behind other collective organisms to continue our species—but that humans are not particularly special compared to dogs, cats or ocean animals—and that the greatest threat facing our modern times is man-made global warming. It is from the Bill Nye type of thinkers that the NASA program was all but shut down in the past and that they don’t want humans thinking too much about themselves intellectually but instead need to find their happy place on planet earth and learn to live there in harmony with nature. The evolution of this progressive thinking actually comes from medieval Europe where the Christian church proposed by the remnants of the Roman Empire had been adopted by that society which actually came from oriental sentiment considered in India at the time and collided with the individual thinking of the Troubadours and Arthurian romances already in bloom. The two vantage points never fit together correctly and Europe has been fragmented in its thinking for well over a thousand years now and that essential problem is at the heart of everything concerning conflict between the eastern and western worlds. The people of the Middle East will admit that they are collectivists so it’s easy for them to submit themselves to angry gods who rule from the heavens. Eastern societies are also collectivists and will sacrifice their individuality in a moment to the higher powers of celestial involvement. However Europe was already asking hard questions about the role of the individual soul well before Roman brought that eastern religion of Christianity to its empire and people didn’t agree, and they still don’t leaving us with a very fragmented religious element that still desires to put the individual at the front of thought while the collective nature of all religion seeks to remain the superior force.

The critics of The Ark Encounter fail because they essentially insist that the new religion of earth worship be the dominate bond that unites America with the rest of the world in “progressive” thought. Their religion is actually one that the Nazi movement was based heavily on—a kind of Celtic reinvention from a time before the Roman Empire used Christianity to unit its empire with common thought. But, the Celtics were not the Troubadours so there are factions of people who uniquely professed to the world that individuality was important and that our souls were special in the role of the universe—that God would have Noah be the keeper of the world’s animals and that he alone with his three sons and their wives would save all mankind on earth for another round on the Vico cycle. To me it’s a story that says a lot more than history can put its finger on at the moment. To others it is the path to eternal life to harbor their individual souls spiritually. To others it’s a threat to that classic European problem—an eastern religion mixed with western thought to provide so much conflict and pain, that ancient religions long destroyed by the Roman Empire are still desired behind the mask of “earth worship.”

What’s important is the discussions that pour forth and who would have ever known that little Williamstown, Kentucky would be such a center for philosophic discussion. It’s not New York or Chicago or even London that is the center of modern debate such as Athens served in the past—but a little exit along I-75 where Ken Ham built a massive recreation of Noah’s Ark and invited debate on a campus designed to spark discussion. That is the aspect to all this that is beautiful and those who don’t want the debate—but just want to lazily accept the conclusions of religions that came before us as fact of course don’t want those debates to occur—just as they don’t want Donald Trump to Make America Great Again. They just want to live, die, and be forgotten so that the Earth can live its life as a celestial sphere only to eventually die itself as the sun runs out of fuel and the universe will never know that we ever had a human race that thought, built and contemplated new ways of thinking aside from the inherit violence of a universe expanding, contracting, and dying itself for reasons that defy reasoning. At least at the Ark Encounter there is a defined purpose for living that is presented and that maybe the greatest threat of all.

Rich Hoffman

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Hollywood Down 8% in 2017: Trading politics for profit to destroy an industry

This is far more important than most people think—the movie box office for July of 2017 was down 8% from the same period a year ago. Additionally Disney has lost around 4 million subscribers to its Disney Channels over the past three years as kids turn to other forms of entertainment. More and more homes are cutting their cable service as it’s just too expensive for what people get, and theater owners are struggling to survive with Hollywood giving them very little to work with to justify the big investment that a movie ticket costs these days. That same home theater market is keeping people home more rather than go to the theater to see movies that could otherwise just be seen on Netflix. If you couple all that with the Donald Trump versus the media battle—which will hurt traditional media extensively, the entertainment industry is in big trouble—which I have been saying for a long time. All the stocks are down for the theater owners—which I feel sorry for. The distributors have let them down by pushing a product that was just too liberal for mainstream American audiences and now they’ve all been hung out to dry.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/box-office-hollywoods-franchise-crisis-worsens-july-fourth-1018493

http://www.tubefilter.com/2017/07/05/disney-channel-freeform-ratings-falling/

For about 20 years I bounced around with tentative meetings within Hollywood. For me it was more than a treasure hunt, I really wanted to make movies and to contribute to the library of wonderful movies that I had grown up with. The business end was something I didn’t have much patience for since most of the people running the industry were radically more liberal than I was. So I’d get a project floating around out there but it would go cold. The money guys were also liberal so the project proposals I suggested were either heavily scrutinized with extensive re-writes to soften them up, or they just weren’t getting off the ground. In a few cases I was offered positions in the industry, but my wife didn’t want to move to California—and without living in such a way that you could network in that town, it was pretty much impossible to get any project off the ground. I went to several film festivals, won a few screenwriting awards and ended up doing a few bull whip stunts for legitimate studios but the last time I flew back from Hollywood in 2008 I knew that the industry was in trouble from a business perspective. They weren’t going to make it which made me sad, because I liked traditional Hollywood—I always liked Howard Hughes, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Albert Hitchcock, John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. These new filmmakers in Hollywood were too political and I was from a flyover state so things just weren’t going to work out. After that last trip I put my focus into other business opportunities and waited for the inevitable which is now upon us.

Movies cost too much to make, the labor unions which represent all the industry people has forced them all to think too collectively to stay in touch with the American people. Reading with great interest how the Han Solo movie fell apart at Lucasfilm it’s obvious that the new generation is just too soft and manipulated by their director’s guilds—into liberal politics which the movie going audiences can’t stand. Even though I warned of all this years ago, and have written extensively about it since, it still hurts to see an entire industry collapsing on itself. The Hollywood product is now on life support with only a few big Disney releases carrying most of the industry. Warner Bros. has done well with Wonder Woman, and Marvel had their usual hits with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2. Small films like Baby Driver did respectable business, but big films like Pirates of the Caribbean 5 were down a quarter from the previous installment worldwide and that isn’t good news. Critics have been hard on these new movies as they have an extreme political slant to most reviews and once the Rotten Tomatoes scores hit online people are so turned off they just don’t go see these films and that cycle is worsening.

Hollywood is about more than just the movies themselves—it’s about an entire industry from print media like Entertainment Weekly, The Hollywood Reporter, to the television shows Inside Edition and Entertainment Tonight. Critics for the big newspapers have national audiences in some cases and they have abused their relationships and let that stardom go to their heads giving themselves the power to sink or swim a picture—so essentially they have cut off their own noses to spite their faces. I remember a very specific day in Glendale, California where several day time television programs were set up on the same street to shoot exteriors and I was having lunch with some people who worked the trade publications who were full of themselves way too dangerously. I tried to make them aware of the fragile eco system that was on full display and they had the kind of attitude that the gravy train was going to go on forever. Well, within two years every one of those people was out of a job and their publications had folded. They should have listened, but of course they didn’t. Most of those big name trade publications won’t be around much longer because nobody really cares what they have to say. The media stars they talk about are today far more political than they used to be and they have aligned themselves against Trump who is set to be a very popular and successful president, and now there just aren’t enough fans of their material to carry them into the next decade.

There are going to be a lot of bankruptcies—and even the Disney Company will feel the squeeze. While I continue to be very impressed with what Disney is doing at their parks and with the Star Wars movies as one giant mythology spanning many platforms—computer games, etc—they still rely too much on theater owners to distribute their core products and those theater owners need more than just Disney to stay afloat. They need every weekend to have people wanting to go to the theaters to buy over-priced popcorn and soda to watch a movie they don’t want to wait for release on the home market where likely the televisions they have at home is far better than what is offered at the theater. I will have to add that when my wife and I went to see The Book of Henry that the Regal Cinemas we went to had adjusted their prices down for popcorn and pop to a very reasonable level. The theater owners out there are doing their jobs and adjusting to the marketplace, but Hollywood hasn’t. They keep making the same crap and trying to repackage it instead of turning loose people with great ideas to constantly keep material fresh. I know I wasn’t the only one trying to get new ideas to production companies—it was mainly a cultural problem. Studio execs were too interested in getting laid at the multiple parties around town by telling chicks that they were for this liberal cause or that—so they were making decisions at the executive level in producing products that American audiences did not want to see. Once they got their blow job they had already committed their studio to ten films for production the next year which nobody would want to see because of their overly liberalized political overtones. Sure the chick who was giving blow jobs at the party liked the Matt Damon movie about fracking—but nobody in America wanted to see it and the budget was blown.

So the industry is toast—it won’t recover in its present form. Of course there will be investment opportunities in new styles of media, but the Hollywood game is over. The industry just hasn’t come to terms with it yet. There are a few $1 billion dollar earners yet to be released in 2017 but it won’t be enough. By the end of the year the gains will be so far down that they won’t even be worth discussing. And life outside of Hollywood will go on. All I can say to those people who were so haughty 10 years ago is that I sincerely tried to tell you this would happen, but you didn’t listen. I wish you had. So now it’s time to pay—and it will be painful. But you people did it to yourselves. America will be great again and Hollywood has removed itself from being a part of it—and that’s a damn shame.

Rich Hoffman

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White Supremacy is not a Conservative Value: Using the 4th of July to measure American evolution for the better

I remember what it was like to not have a representative in the White House. Last year during the 4th of July in 2016 I was able to start seeing a light at the end of the tunnel as it was obvious that Trump was going to be the Republican nominee. The Brexit vote shocked the world and FBI Director James Comey revealed the extent of Hillary Clinton’s crimes during a press conference. So I was feeling pretty good about things politically for the first time in my adult life. Of course now that Trump is president everything is happening just as I expected it to and I’m happy. He’s done more in his first half-year as president than anyone in history and he’s just getting started. Yet it is still stunning to see how narrow-minded the political left is. Their opinions of Trump are rooted in complete hatred which I can understand to some extent. After all, I have hated the people they’ve had in the White House for many decades. I didn’t stop enjoying life because of it though—which is what is going on with them. While watching President Trump and Melania speak at a 4th of July picnic to a normal person there was nothing to be upset about. Like him or not, Trump represented the office of president nicely, and with respect. But the vile hatred that was exhibited was quite astonishing—especially in Melania’s case.

During the long weekend, I was able to watch a few documentaries that I noticed on Netflix about the Ruby Ridge incident, and the Oklahoma City Bombing which umbrellaed Ruby Ridge, Waco, and then climaxing into Oklahoma City with a PBS spin on the whole thing—essentially from the vantage point of the political left. It’s been a while but It surprised me how much the white supremacist groups played a part in those terrorist attacks that were very much a part of the 90s. Essentially, as the Clinton administration tried very hard to strip away individual liberty and firearms rights it was the neo-Nazi groups on the so-called “fringe right” that were most enraged. I couldn’t help but conclude that many of the radical religious views of the white supremacists were a lot like those of ISIS—where they take an extremist view of religion and use it to justify violence.

Clearly the Clinton administration was cramming its values down on those people to incite them to violence—poking their fingers in their eyes hoping to get them fighting so they could justify federal action in destroying them. Obviously, they didn’t succeed because the political left found itself out of power anyway and those neo-Nazi’s are still out there in the countryside of rural counties all over America. Generally, this is how it goes, the further away from big cities that you get in America the less tolerant people are toward diversity—and more literal the interpretation of the Constitution will be displayed in conjunction with religious texts. The closer to a city that people live the more progressive they will be, and it is there that Hillary Clinton found almost her entire voter base in 2017. It is important to remember with these neo-Nazis that the NAZI order was a socialist one, so to a person like me—these white supremacist groups don’t get it. They are acting purely out of fear from the perspective of their race and are missing the fine points of the current Constitutional philosophy. The PBS filmmakers obviously wanted to sum up the issue that anyone who wasn’t like them—urban progressive—were more like these neo-Nazi groups and that gun shows were the breeding ground for violence.

Well, I know a lot of people and I spend a lot of time around guns and I can say that I don’t know anybody like those neo-Nazi groups that were featured in the Waco, Oklahoma City, or Ruby Ridge incidents as background characters. And anyone who knows me knows I’m certainly no racist. I probably associate with more people foreign-born on a friendly basis than any ten people who you know dear reader so the PBS filmmakers and the political left in general obviously do not understand what makes up the conservative right. I would hardly call neo-Nazis the “far right” because by their own definitions they are way too collectivist based to be considered properly conservative. They have more in common with the political left than they do with someone like me—and other Trump voters. Trump certainly isn’t in that neo-Nazi category. The political left just lacks the proper definitions so they have made them up. Trump’s supporter base is a far cry from the kind of people who were involved ultimately in the bombing of Oklahoma City.

But, one thing to note, the further away from cities that people in America are—the less they trust the government and rely on their own individuality to get through life. Only a very small percentage of them are like the white supremacist groups shown on PBS. The white supremacy activism is just a byproduct of ignorance that emerges when the outside world is too far removed to color their thoughts with options—much like ISIS might emerge in the middle of the desert in the Middle East without a local movie theater there to bring culture to their region—and something else to think about besides Mohammed’s rules and virgins in the afterlife once they’ve already mutilated the women here on earth. Extremism happens when ignorance is cultivated. We clearly see this in the inner-city cultures where Democrats run the failing—bankrupt cities—like Chicago and Detroit. Extremism on all sides happen because people have limited understandings of things happening outside of their regions—and lack a basic curiosity to discover them.

Trump is certainly no neo-Nazi white supremacist. His ability to communicate is quite extraordinary and I found his speeches on the Fourth of July to be refreshing. I would have thought that even if I weren’t a supporter. So yes, it was astonishing to see that people disliked Donald Trump so much even though he was clearly not trying to stoke the flames against his political rivals. That tells me something very important—that people like those who made those PBS videos are upset that their attempt to categorize Trump supporters as some ignorant white supremacists had failed completely—because that’s why they were so upset. It had nothing to do with anything the First Family had said—it was that they didn’t fit the narrative that had been created over a long period of time. Trump the billionaire and his supermodel wife had more in common with the rural American than the PBS producer who investigated radicalism on the political right in an effort to advance progressive agendas to a public guilted into compliance without conflict. Watching those documentaries now as opposed to a year ago, it was like they were made in a different America where the standard modes of framing debate would hold to the scrutiny of reality. Fear and loathing is no longer the accepted mode of control that can be used to steer the population into a particular direction. The red state which has traditionally shaken its head at the city dwellers who voted for a bunch of nonsense feel good sentiment had taken back the country. Trump was their representative and the change is very obvious and will last a very long time.

Rich Hoffman

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The Mysterious Skull Cult of Göbekli Tepe: An 11,500 year old temple is just the beginning of the story

It was very interesting this week to see a press release from the German archaeologist Julia Gresky regarding an obvious skull cult at Göbekli Tepe dating back to around 11,500 years ago at the great stone temples discovered under a large mound in southern Turkey at the head waters of the Tigris Euphrates rivers. Göbekli Tepe has been a mystery since it was first discovered in the mid 1990s as the 40 ton stone pillars built there with intricate carvings defy logic as measured against what we typically think of regarding human evolution from hunters and gathers, farmers, then city-state administrators. Rather, the temple is evidence that extremely advanced engineering, and astronomical understandings were present at the end of the last Ice Age and this is something that just wasn’t part of our understanding of human development up to this point. And now, with the announcement of this skull cult we have evidence of an elaborate understanding of a long gone religion that started in the cradle of civilization well before the Sumerians would rise to power further downstream many thousands of years later. Göbekli Tepe is mysterious for a lot of reasons but one thing is absolutely known because of it—that we are just dipping our feet into the depths of history. There is much more to discover and we must be open to those discoveries so that we can learn from that history and not follow the Vico cycle into what has obviously happened to mankind in the past—and keep making the same mistakes over and over each time the human mind makes some major advancement then collapse on itself out of sheer stupidity.

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2017/06/29/temple-doom-grisly-skull-cult-discovery-at-ancient-site.html

Göbekli Tepe is a fine example of how the Vico cycle has transpired over many thousands of years to see a declining culture transpire over time instead of an ever-present increase in thought which most of our sciences assume. The mistake is in taking for granted that once a scientific discovery is made—such as fire—that forever it will remain in the catalogue of human behavior. Once we learn it—we keep it so to say. But this isn’t the case. Just as in our present age where our political aspects lean toward regression we find that current generations of people are actually less equipped to care for intellectual knowledge than previous ones and thus the Vico cycle moves through its various phases, theocracy, aristocracy, democracy and then ultimately anarchy only to begin again to start completely over. In some cases the process takes thousands of years. In others it only takes a few hundred—but the human mind seems to be a prisoner to this trend by their own inclination. At Göbekli Tepe the once advanced founders had their work buried and less equipped monuments were built upon the originals and this went on for a long time until the site was just buried under a massive mound that many thought was just a giant hillside. We are learning only now that we must never take for granted any hillside that we see anywhere in the world because under some of them are the origins to many of our myths and legends which are awaiting discovery. There is so much that we don’t understand.

My personal feelings about these discovers are perhaps more objective than even those of the scientists who discover these great finds because I am able to have my feet in many different worlds and have a perspective driven by freedom that they don’t enjoy—such as the archaeologist Julia Gresky. I live in a very affluent area of the world where all the gifts of culture are presented from fine food to literature and advanced tools easily accessible through my local hardware stores. I have access on a daily basis the greatest tools created by the human mind and I live in an economy that allows me to participate in those creations freely. But as I’ve traveled to different places around the world it is very obvious that not everyone is so gifted and many cultures are essentially still hunters and gatherers. Human advancement does not occur and give rise to all people everywhere. Many are limited by religious beliefs which prevent them from properly interacting with advanced cultures—or they for one reason or another are not economically able to engage in trade with a more advanced society. For instance in present day America it is unlikely that a typical Santa Monica resident from California will interact with a village in Ghana, Africa. The only way they might meet each other is if the Ghana resident shows up one day in Southern California looking for a job and is willing to leave behind their homeland for opportunities. Because the Santa Monica resident just won’t be giving up everything in their life to live in a hut in Ghana—they’d have to give up most everything they know about the world to even participate in such a thing. So the exchange of knowledge won’t happen—and that is in our present day of global communication and easy travel from one place to another. I am often surprised how primitive people become right out of big cities in Europe, Asia and even around the Americas. It’s not hard for me to see how Neolithic people may have developed separately around the world such as at Göbekli Tepe while hunters and gatherers in England were freely walking across the English Channel into France hunting animals as nomads. They may have run into and even traded with people from Göbekli Tepe and other advanced cultures who had developed engineering abilities but it may have taken many thousands of years for that intellectual information to find its way into the static cultures of their less advanced societies. That is easy for me to see where scientists like Julia Gresky spend much of their time season after season begging for funding then digging and digging on a very focused site like Göbekli Tepe to bring about more information like this recent skull cult evidence—which was assumed very early on but only recently was confirmed with all her hard work. Our evidence collection is slow at best but the assumptions of cause and effect can easily be made by global comparisons for those fortunate enough to have that exposure.

I continue to think that we are just scratching the surface in regards to our history. I think we’ll find even more advanced temples and cities the deeper we dig that are even older than Göbekli Tepe. I would offer that many of them are under water since ocean levels were vastly different during this post Ice Age period and over time we’ll discover them so long as we can avoid the effects of the Vico cycle. I would offer that the many wars in the region of Göbekli Tepe are created to avoid the discovers which await us in the many mounds of the region showing us that societies like the Sumerians were just distant descendents to cultures who founded Göbekli Tepe. We won’t know until we do proper archaeological investigation and you can’t do that so long as there are wars over regional interpretations of religion between Christianity and Islam texts identifying boundaries established by kings of recent memory. Obviously the history extends well beyond those recent developments and the Vico cycle insists on destroying the past so that the current can survive and that is the element which drives the cycle of madness—and so long as that continues—we’ll never get anywhere. Bu the evidence does keep coming in for those willing to look at it and the discovery of the skull cult at Göbekli Tepe is quite compelling. We need to let the evidence take us where it will—because we still have a lot to learn and by learning it—we may save mankind once and for all which I think is a noble pursuit.

Rich Hoffman

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Time to put the Democrats in Jail: Illinois is bankrupt and the cause was that liberal political party of criminals

Doesn’t anybody find it odd that most of the people involved in the 2016 Election are under some kind of criminal investigation except for Donald Trump. It is quite clear now that the only reason Trump’s administration has had a host of investigations leveled against it were to take the attention away from the real crimes being committed. Now we have learned that even Bernie Sanders and his wife were part of the mismanagement and financial ruin of a little upstart college. Likely all they are really guilty of is being stupid socialists who don’t understand money or how to manage it—but like their other members of the Democratic Party—they have shown a desire to run our lives even though they have proven they can’t run their own. Specifically, I’m talking about the immense problems in Illinois which I articulated several years ago announcing the bankruptcy the state is facing largely because of the mismanagement of money in the city of Chicago. All these problems are coming from the Democratic Party and they use crime to hide their stupidity over and over again essentially until Trump’s presidency took away that excuse and started fighting back. Now they have been opened up and exposed for the criminals they always were and the payday is upon them.

That is why as Republicans, no person who calls themselves such should turn away from this vast evil revealed to us by Democrats during that same 2016 Election. As soon as they thought appropriate they went after the Trump administration with all the teeth and claws they had—and really for the first time our Republican representative in a sitting office did not back down—which exposed them. Now we see that it was Loretta Lynch who obstructed justice during that same campaign. We also know that Eric Holder committed many crimes as head of the Justice Department under the direction of Barack Obama. We know Obama spied on the Trump transition team and that we had an activist FBI director who was leaking sensitive information to news outlets—particularly The New York Times. We have already established the many crimes of the Clinton family, but when you add to that the DNC collusion to keep Bernie Sanders out of the primary, and then the sad actions of Bernie Sanders himself what we end up with is a serious bunch of misfits who shouldn’t be anywhere near an elected position. Most of them should be in jail. These aren’t just bad people, they are criminals and they deserve to have the full weight of justice leveled at them.

Failure to punish these people is to invite further debate and a lot of wasted time lost fighting with them over the critical issues of our day. If left alone to roam about freely, they will insist to bankrupt our nation into the poor state that Illinois currently finds itself in. There are really only two ways to deal with the bankruptcy of Illinois—you have to have explosive economic growth to pay down all the debts, or you have to go bankrupt. There isn’t any middle ground because the interest payments alone will destroy the state with fiscal liability. And there aren’t any Democrats out there who are legitimately offering to solve the problem with a proper economic philosophy. They are the “socialism or bust” Party, and reality has determined that they—bust.

The most tenacious of the Democrats out there who refuse the reality of their broken philosophy have taken up the plight of crime to profit from their political careers—because unlike Democrats from the past who gave away money to various unions and mismanaged their cities like Santa Claus on Christmas—the payments are coming due in our current time and someone has to pay. That has pushed the Democratic leadership toward crime just to survive and now they have all been caught. There isn’t a one of them alive today from Chuck Schumer to Nancy Pelosi who doesn’t know the true situation and all they have is schemes of deceit to inflict their propaganda. But they are exposed and as Republicans the time to act is now. Nobody should hesitate to utterly destroy the Democratic Party because if left to their peace, they will try to destroy ours. There is no reasoning with them and we cannot all co-exist. What they want for America is economic collapse and unification with a world government. And Republicans want fiscal responsibility and sovereignty. Those ideas are not compatible with one another So one must lose and one other will continue on to become the governing philosophy of our nation.

It is important to observe the trajectory of events to arrive at the proper strategic conclusion, Trump has only been in the White House for six months as of this writing and because the Democrats came after him so hard, the same rules if applied to them which is what has them in so much trouble now threatens to destroy their Party. Another six months of this activity will seal the deal and Republicans must do their part to make it so. Don’t extend out a helping hand at the last moment, and don’t offer them a reassuring assimilation. Have the heart to destroy them so that we can get onto the proper management of our country with a unified general philosophy. Obviously from there another two-party system will emerge but the party of insurgency—which the Democrats became do not have a place in the discussion of American ideas so long as their basic definition is change from a traditional nation to a more European progressive one.

The way to win all the needed regional seats, the state seats and of course the critical seats at the federal level is to take the crimes the Democrats have been caught in and pound them into the ground until there is nothing left. Forget the debate, just go for the metaphorical jugular. Trump has demonstrated this effectiveness, so now it’s time to do the same at every level of our governing population. There isn’t any reason that Republicans should fight each other so long as there are Democrats to destroy. Get rid of them then have the subtle debates about how to go about governing business within the framework of the Constitution.

A failure to do this will only result in more states like Illinois and cities like Chicago to go bankrupt over promised pension obligations and further liberal policies which destroy economic growth. The situation is critical presently and the only way out is either radical cutting of budgets or absolutely explosive economic growth. We can’t have it both ways as insurgent Democrats propose. Their aim was never to fix problems in America, but to use problems to change our nation into something more like Europe and this just is not an acceptable reality. When it didn’t work policy wise, they turned to crime and now several at the top of the Democratic Party food chain have been caught and it’s time to make them pay. Hillary Clinton should be in jail. Loretta Lynch should also be in jail. The proof is extremely convincing and that’s before we do any digging. Eric Holder as well—Barack Obama—they all deserve to be raked over the coals much worse than Donald Trump has—Democrats set the criteria and now they must live with it. Bernie Sanders—the communist—he needs to be given the letter of the law and put in his place for everything he has done to speak out of both sides of his mouth and create a climate of insurgency that he has fostered over the last few years. These people have done it to themselves and now it’s time to go after their jugular for all that’s right and moral. Do them in and don’t look back or feel the least bit sorry for them. They have been bad people and their deserve what’s coming.

Rich Hoffman

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‘Baby Driver’: Reflections where facts are more dramatic than fiction

Even through the new film Baby Driver isn’t quite out yet I think it’s safe to say that my own car chase story Tail of the Dragon is still the most intense action packed of its kind ever put to paper by a human mind to date. But I’ll have to say, when I wrote that story, I was thinking about movies done in the style of this soon to be Edger Wright classic. There is room in our culture for a lot more of these types of stories and this one has hit me hard with anticipation for many personal reasons. First of all, since I first heard the song “Radar Love” by the Dutch Band Golden Earring in 1973 I have wanted to see it used as a backdrop for a car chase of some kind and it looks like Edger Wright has done it. Second of all, by the previews shown so far, the main character of Baby played by Ansel Elgort looks remarkably biographical to my real life between my 17^th and 19^th years of life. After all it was those experiences which provoked me to write Tail of the Dragon to begin with—to get all that out on paper. So it makes me very happy to see movies like Baby Driver getting made and that several of the Fast and Furious movies have continued to push great box office numbers in theaters. I hope the same for this one—I am very excited for it.

I’ve alluded to it before but after watching these trailers it may be time to get a little more specific because the Baby character just in these previews speaks to me with quite a bit of reflection. I understand his dilemma. It was only a month or so ago where a political enemy of mine had looked me up on one of those online searches trying to get dirt on me, and they were stunned at what came back to them. It showed over 17 hostile interactions with law enforcement and this person sent me that information hoping to get some leverage on me because I’m now living the life of a respectable citizen and they thought I wanted to hide that past. What they didn’t know is that I consider my actions back then—at that critical juncture between youth and adulthood–to be very respectable—even though it might have been on the wrong side of the law. All I ever wanted was freedom—real freedom—and I wanted to be a millionaire quickly and just step over the nonsense of fighting it out the way I saw was making other people miserable. I did live heavily in the fast lane and I was willing to use those skills to acquire all the money I could to launch a family and when I found the right girl for me—those people didn’t want to let me out of that lifestyle—and many conflicts ensued.

If I were ever have been said to have an addiction it was probably speed, the kind you get from driving a car extremely fast. Like I said, as a youth when I first heard the song “Radar Love,” I was thinking of it playing to excessive speed in very fast cars. The very first person I remember admiring as a young man was Evel Knievel so even at ages 5, 6, and 7 moving fast and recklessly was pretty much all I thought about—so when I was finally able to turn 16 and buy my own car I was ready and I quickly made a reputation for myself. My very first traffic ticket for excessive speed was on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving in 1984 where I was in a race with a Trans Am that clearly out powered my car at the time. So the only way to win was to have more nerve than he did—so I flew through a swarm of cops parked at the Tri-County Mall in Cincinnati on the wrong side of the road at well over a 100 MPH—against the traffic. When the police got the radar gun on me they caught my speed at 85 MPH in a 35 zone. They would have taken me to jail for reckless operation but one call to the Sharonville police station told them to just issue me the ticket. I was under the protection of the senior judge in that district and literally had a get out of jail free pass given to me by him—because I did work on the side for him which was related to a mob outfit in Chicago—and they wanted me free to do it.

The way that Kevin Spacey’s character is portrayed in Baby Driver reminds me precisely of one of my first “bosses.” This guy ran a car dealership that I worked for and from that I had to do more than just sell new and used cars. I did repo work and they liked me because I had no reservations about danger—as people obviously didn’t like having their cars taken back when they failed to make payments. I was always very eager to sneak up to someone’s house and take their car without being shot, and people did shoot at me while doing this kind of thing. It was very exciting and I thoroughly enjoyed it. These days repo guys aren’t allowed to do some of the things we did to get our cars back so for me it was a unique opportunity to live very dangerously and get away with it legally—and make great money doing it. But then again, the car dealership was a front at the time for cocaine dealing—as a way to launder the money and all these repo jobs were ways that this Kevin Spacey style “boss” could check to make sure I wouldn’t be a rat—because they needed a driver to help deliver regionally.

I had my limits of course. I didn’t mind the danger or the drama of court appearances and the continuous threat of jail—but I did not like drugs. So when the dealership sent me with another senior car salesman down to Over-the-Rhine to deliver cocaine to a distributer operating across from Union Terminal it was in my precious car which had survived many high-speed encounters and for which I was particularly attached to. Of course they didn’t tell me what we were doing—they let me believe that the whole operation was going to be a unique repo job, so I didn’t ask what was in the suitcase in my back seat. But I did think it was strange that we didn’t take a company car on this effort—as we typically did. This was my car and the salesman smoked—and because we were not in a company car I had a little sign on my dashboard telling passengers that there was no smoking allowed. In fact, people who knew me also knew my very strict policy against drug use. So this forty something drug dealer who was very rich I might add, was very upset with my rules and promised that I’d have a hard time when we got back to the office. So things weren’t getting off to a good start. When we arrived to the destination he left the suitcase in my back seat and told me he’d be right back as he went to the door of the townhouse where the target lived. While he was in there I took a peek at what was in the suitcase and I saw that it was cocaine.

Over the years up to that point I had a reputation of not flinching at anything. I knew some of these people I was working with were serious criminals and some were very powerful politicians and sports stars. I was with them as a body-guard at times even though I was very young, and as an assurance that no matter what happened I was their ticket out of it. They had never asked me to directly commit a crime—but rather used me as a lifeline back to freedom—and I was very dependable. But, I had just met my future wife and I was thinking of living a normal life that we could build a family with—and once you’ve been invited to those types of circles—they don’t want you out flapping your mouth about every little thing you’ve seen. They’d prefer you to be dead or with them—there really isn’t any middle ground. So with drugs in my backseat I left that guy down there and headed back to the sales office where the mission started and reported back to my Kevin Spacey looking boss that his partner at the dealership was selling drugs. He looked at me exasperated. “You left him there?” Of course I had to tell him yes and there was about a half hour of excessive panic because this Over-the-Rhine distributer had a ruthless reputation and now he had to call in for help while he was in hostile territory. I was commanded to go back and get him for which I refused. They had to send someone else.

Maybe I’ll write about the details sometime about what happened next but needless to say the Baby Driver plot reminds me of the two weeks that followed. I can really sympathize with the Baby character especially at that time in my life. I wanted to be married to this wonderful new girl and I wanted away from those types of people—and it wasn’t easy. A lot of people got into a lot of trouble and I had to drive very fast a lot to stay out of both jail and this side of the dirt—because these people did play for keeps. It seemed like a long time then, because at only 19 years of age, time moves more slowly, but in reality it was all over in just a few months. Things worked out for me the way I needed them to. It was a tough adjustment to live without the level of money I was used to. Just out of high school I made twice as much money as my dad did at the prime of his career, but my country club wife assured me that she wanted to do everything clean and that holds true to this very day. It took a while, but eventually I was able to climb out of that hole in my lifestyle—and it was all worth it—especially being able to live and tell about it.

It doesn’t happen often but just watching the previews for this new Baby Driver movie set to “Radar Love” took my mind instantly to this very turbulent time and I won’t even pretend that it was all bad. I loved living like that. It was fun to live beyond the rules and to be so good at things that people would literally do anything to make it so you could keep doing it. For the first seven years of my marriage I didn’t have a driver’s license because once I stepped away from that life the courts crashed down on me and it wasn’t easy—the penalties were severe. That past kept clawing away at me trying to either pull me back in, or destroy me in the process—it took about an entire decade to finally outpace that lifestyle I had before my marriage. People had to die off and the fast life caught up to many of them who did manage to live for the next decade. They either destroyed themselves or they ended up in jail. There wasn’t really any middle ground.

Needless to say, I feel a connection to Baby Driver and I really hope it does good business during its run. Speaking from experience I think what’s worse than a life of crime is a life not lived. The spontaneity of life is a magical thing and you often don’t really see it until you are pushed well beyond your comfort levels. And even though he is villainous in this movie Kevy Spacey’s character is right—people do love a good heist—they do need something to talk about over their “lattés” Thinking of “Radar Love” and the way the scenes played out for the preview of Baby Driver, I feel quite a lot of satisfaction knowing that I gave plenty of stories that have been talked about over a great many lattés. And in the great theater of living, that’s not a bad thing. I can’t wait to see Baby Driver.

Rich Hoffman

Sign up for Second Call Defense here: http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707 Use my name to get added benefits.

The 2017 Dayton Airshow: Short but sweet–with Trump now president aviation has a new lease on life

As usual, The Chairman’s Club hosts at the Dayton Air Show did a great job; the food was particularly good during this 2017 event. It usually is, but this time it was even better and still proves to be the best way to see the great exhibition of American airpower. It was a rough weekend for the long running air show at the birthplace of aviation. On Friday the Thunderbirds had an accident during a reconnaissance flight which essentially ended them for the weekend—a big blow to the schedule. Then by Sunday the weather was just fantastic except for the very windy conditions. Several acts were cut making the show which should have been over four and a half hours to a whittled down three hours long. But the best part of the day was when the great B-25s paid tribute to the Doolittle Raid with a massive wall of fire right in front of my seat.

The Dayton Airshow was great as usual. pic.twitter.com/460hGycK0Q

— Rich Hoffman (@overmanwarrior) June 25, 2017

I normally take more pictures at these types of events but for a change I just enjoyed the day and watched in awe how wonderful the F/A-18 Super Hornet performed as well as the F-35. I tried to record some of the afterburner action but the sound was so overwhelming that it was difficult to capture the immensity of it. So for the day, mostly, I just enjoyed the show. It was a privilege to be there and to witness such a raw exhibition of American horsepower and I think I felt that way because Trump was in the White House now as opposed to years past when Obama was in charge of the military. I’ve been to the Dayton Air Show a lot of times but I don’t always feel compelled to write about it, because there always seemed to be a cloud over the military in the past prior to the election of Donald Trump.

This year the food did taste better, the sun was brighter and the engines sounded more eager to race out into the heavens to protect the idea of America from the insurgents of anti-capitalist sentiment. So even though the show was much shorter than normal, the festivities had more teeth to them with an optimism exhumed from a changing administration. Everyone involved with the show seemed to be functioning from a little less desperation and the multiple American flags displayed around the show seemed to be more proud than usual. In the past it seemed that people revered the flag almost like a dying loved one. They respected it but there was always the concern that it might not be there tomorrow. Nobody wanted to talk about it, but everyone seemed to feel that way. This year it was like a new lease on life, and the American flag didn’t feel like an ancient piece of nostalgia.

As I sat there in those nice seats and enjoyed the great food I couldn’t help but think about my various trips to different countries over the past year. Those countries don’t have planes like we do, the good work of Boeing, Lockheed Martin and many others are unique to the United States. It is planes like that F/A-18 Super Hornet that have really extended the reach of American politics into regions desperately in need of capitalism—and it has kept the bad guys away from American borders for many generations. The power that was on display has a lot to do with our freedoms—it truly is the birthplace of aviation in Dayton where it all started and essentially made America great to begin with. Aviation is critical to our global success and air shows like the one in Dayton are monstrously critical to advancements in that field.

They had a Wright Brothers Flyer replica which was the plane they built there in Dayton first flown down in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. I’ve seen the plane before, or versions of it, but this time there was a guy who was there operating the controls and showing how the Wright Brothers actually steered the plane by twisting the wings ever so slightly. It was remarkably like a bicycle which made sense because the Wright Brothers were bicycle mechanics. They applied those general mechanics to invent the concept of flight and it was a minor miracle that they managed to pull it off. Essentially all the great planes on display at the Dayton Air Show were just further advancements of those basic concepts created by that Wright flyer.

It is a privilege to have so much aviation activity in Ohio and it is a testament to Dayton that everything started there. Each year when the Dayton Air Show takes place at the international airport it is a special event because it was there and only there where everything started and it reminds me of how important and to what extent aviation plays in the promise of freedom around the world. It is certainly something to be proud of for those of us who reside in such an aviation rich area. It is always good to see such a celebration displayed without any pretense of apology for being so good. There was just so much there that was good that it was overwhelming.

Who says there isn't love in the world? This is how we say it in America. pic.twitter.com/yE6YhVmcP9

— Rich Hoffman (@overmanwarrior) June 25, 2017

But what stood out for me was the simulation of the Doolittle Raid—where Americans volunteered to bomb Tokyo and show the Japanese that they weren’t safe within their homeland. The attack had the needed effect psychologically on the Japanese people and it wasn’t long thereafter when they lost the war. Because of Doolittle’s B-25 raid of Tokyo, Japan had to push out their carriers further from their homeland and it changed the way they conducted the war—which allowed for the tide to turn against them. Aviation is the key to changing battlefield tactics and the politics which causes conflict—so it’s excessively important. Similarly the F/A-18 Super Hornet has changed the fight against ISIS–the very threat of them operating in the Middle East forces the bad guys to operate in a clandestine way preventing them from bringing their evil out in open—which is wonderful. Knowing all that, it is always special to see them up close and operating in all their glory—I never tire of their exhibition of raw power.

I mentioned the Chairman’s Club because it is in my opinion the best way to see the Dayton Air Show. In that section are many of the people who are on the cutting edge of advancing aviation in our modern age and it’s good to spend time around them. It is in that continuous march toward innovation in aviation that freedom continues to breath. Without that natural growth America would lose its edge eventually to a country that invented the next great thing. But when it comes to aviation, America has always been and will continue to be the absolute best. Yes, Obama tried to kill our aviation industry with budget cuts while trying to destroy our economy with Obamacare and many other socialist concepts—but now we have a new lease on life. Trump is president and the afterburners on the F-35 sounded just a bit louder this time—because the cloud of insurrection had been removed and suddenly the world of limitless aviation invention seemed boundless—and that was very nice to see.

Rich Hoffman

Sign up for Second Call Defense here: http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707 Use my name to get added benefits.

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