Tag: quantum mechanics

“To Walk in the Woods Where There is No Path”: Understanding the need to live a little dangerously

I am not used to as of yet reading through arguments where people I don’t know quote things I have said to validate their opinions.  Yet I ran across just such a quote by accident seen below from my 2004 Symposium of Justice novel.

“Walk in the woods where there is no path. Live in conflict with those that are superior to you. You will learn, hopefully not too late, that life’s greatest fruits come to those who live a little dangerously. You’ll also find that if you make batters work for a hit, they’ll respect you more as a pitcher. If they get a home run off of you, it will mean more if they earn it.”

– Rich Hoffman, The Symposium of Justice.

I often write the things I do and move on to the next topic never thinking about what impact those statements might have on a reader.  I simply offer the words in hopes of provoking thought in those who place their eyes upon my work. I told recently the story of how Peter Facinelli and I came to work on a project together and it all started with us meeting at a film festival.  I was at that film festival because a college professor had read my book and wanted to do a film version of the story which matched my own intentions, so he came to my house for a weekend of picking at my thoughts regarding his screenplay version of my novel.Fan photo2

While staying with me during this visit, he continued to compare my work to Nietzsche extensively, which I thought was nice, but not relevant.  I made only a passing reference to Nietzsche in The Symposium, but he had taken the dialogue to a whole animated level, which I thought was out of some inner need to attached meaning in his life to important things collected by his mind for the benefit of inner mythology.  So I dismissed his appreciation for my work and instead wanted to focus on the shooting schedule for his film and how we would go about it.  In my mind I had moved on from the intellectual concepts and onto something productive.  That probably has something to do with why he was so shattered when I told him he was a terrible film director when he missed our film festival deadline with footage that was too dark, poorly cut together and virtually worthless.  For me, it was just business.  I didn’t think at the time that the entire reason he wanted to make the film in the first place was that The Symposium had an effect on him, and he wanted to live out a fantasy of becoming a film director with material he felt passionate about.

At another event that I was at a few years later, I had a fan who wanted my autograph and a picture because The Symposium of Justice had impacted him in such a way.  As a person who never seeks autographs or pictures next to celebrities I wasn’t sure what all the hoopla was about.  I had recently just returned from Los Angeles where I did the thing with Facinelli and noticed that everyone was taking pictures next to everyone else.  So I stood next to whomever wanted to stand next to me for a picture.  I didn’t understand it, but I played along.  The good thing about Peter is that he made a point to drive me back to my hotel each day after the film shoot, so when we were in the car away from the set I asked him if he got tired of all the celebrity stuff.  He laughed and said that he did sometimes, but that it was a necessary part of the job.  So when I was at an event promoting the completion of my Symposium project called The Overman I signed autographs and posed for pictures playing along still not sure why anybody would want to do such a thing.  An article about that event can be seen from a Yahoo News piece shown below.

  JAMESTOWN, OH – Award-winning screen writer, author and stunt performer Rich Hoffman brought his most recent independent film project to Greene County, Ohio in March. Hoffman, originally from Middletown, Ohio, teamed up with Gery L. Deer, managing director of GLD Enterprises & Productions of Jamestown, to make a film that combines live action with the latest in high-definition computer generated imaging.

 

It took more than 12 hours to film the live action for the five-minute film short. Post production will take more than a month to complete and the film is scheduled to be released following its premier at the 2009 Indie Gathering independent film festival, August 14 in Cleveland.

The script is based on characters in situations introduced in Hoffman’s dark, futuristic, action novel, “The Symposium of Justice,” released in 2004. The project is professed to be on the cutting edge of digital video effects.

“Rich had an ambitious production schedule and a deadline that required us to do a great deal of work in a very short time,” said Deer, who is best known locally for his work as an independent journalist and entertainer but is also an experienced stunt performer and producer. “We had everything he needed to meet the production goals and, I have to say, short of a Star Wars movie, I have never seen so much green screen material in one place before; it was quite impressive.” All of the sets and background effects will be added in post production.

Green screen is a common term referring to the Chroma key technique used for mixing two images or frames together on film. In Chroma key, a color from one image is removed or made transparent revealing another image behind. This technique is also referred to as color keying, color-separation overlay, and bluescreen.

This process has been used for many years on weather broadcasts, where the presenter appears to be standing in front of a map, but in the studio it is actually a large blue or green background. In film and television production, the process is used to enhance visual effects or reduce costs on set construction.

Actors working on a green screen set perform among green-colored set pieces and backdrops. In post production, specialized computer software recognizes the green tinted background and makes it transparent and replacing it with digital effects. The actors, set pieces and props then appear to be in whatever setting required. Recent films like “300,” “Sin City,” and “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow,” have used this process to create both characters and settings.

Everyone is donating their time to this independent film project, as so many Hollywood-based productions are doing today. GLD Enterprises & Productions provided the production facility and set crew and stunt performers for filming the live action as well as various engineering and technical services.

The hope is that the final product will draw new business for the cast and crew in this sluggish economy where production capital is hard to raise. “This will be a great way to show what our group can do,” said Hoffman. Fortunately, Deer and Hoffman came into the project with an impressive track record.

In 2006, Hoffman’s script, “The Lost Cannibals of Cahokia,” won the highest award possible for a feature screenplay in the horror category at the Indie Gathering international film festival in Cleveland. Since then Hoffman has continued to develop other projects and recently returned from Hollywood where he worked on another independent production as a stuntman and fire whip specialist. A fire whip is a Kevlar bullwhip which is soaked in a specially formulated combustible fuel used for the visual effect.

Deer’s resume includes multiple performance and contest awards and work as a property consultant and designer for the 2003 Universal Studios movie, “The Rundown,” as well as roles in several independent film productions. A writer, whip stunt coach, publicist, and voiceover artist, Deer has been featured on television programs like NBC’s America’s Got Talent and The Bonnie Hunt Show. Deer is also a registered Writers Guild of America screenwriter.

The work was done on a closed set and the details of the script have been kept secret pending the outcome of the film competitions No title has been released at this time. To see photos or get more information about the project go online to www.gldentertainment.com  and click on Hoffman Collaboration.

Source http://voices.yahoo.com/ohio-production-company-plays-major-role-futuristic-3151948.html

I had to finish what that director had started which is what The Overman was all about.  In reality it turned out to be a sample of firewhip work against greenscreen to demonstrate how those two technologies could be incorporated.  We had to shoot all those scenes outside because of the fire and the intense light from the fire making keying in colors during post-production a nightmare, but it worked well and was an award-winning effort.

The purpose of all this is that I wrote The Symposium of Justice from the heart, and many people came to enjoy it, but I moved on to the next phases of my life without looking back much or taking much time to consider what impact that novel had on people. It does make me feel good that so many people enjoyed it, and wanted to work with me just to be near the person who wrote the words.

Now it is equally strange for me to see quotes of my novel appearing here and there as validation to philosophical positions which is a strange sensation—and I think I like it.  I enjoy it in the same way that The Symposium gave me access to people and places that I wouldn’t have enjoyed any other way but to put a story out to the world which touched lives in ways that you always hope for.

I might have been too hard on that film professor—(wanna’ be film director).  He wanted to make the film because he wanted to bring The Symposium to life even though he lacked the emotional tools to do so.  As more and more people go to the trouble of using aspects of my work to support their growing understanding, I will make an effort to be more facilitating of their expanding horizons.  And if that involves a keepsake, or memento such as an autograph, I will make the effort not to appear so stand-offish.

Rich Hoffman

166701_584023358276159_1119605693_n“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The Cincinnati Freedom Expo Speech by K Carl Smith: Ending modern slavery to a government master

One of the most inspiring speeches at the 2013 Cincinnati Freedom Expo came from K Carl Smith founder of the Frederick Douglass Republicans.  Smith as a father and grandfather is an unyielding defender of the Constitution, who has been deeply inspired by the Founding Fathers—a message that has the political left terrified.  As a man of color, Smith has taken the very bold steps of declaring his individuality of thought into advocating his beliefs which unfortunately is unique among African-American demographics who overwhelmingly support the current president Barack Obama not from principle, but due to skin color.  K Carl Smith during his speech to a crowd of thousands was a breath of fresh air as he proudly set the record straight on a number of misconceptions not just related to race, but the little known history of Fredrick Douglass which many in the African-American communities of today are deliberately prevented from learning about in government-run schools.  Such an attempt would logically appear to be one not much different from when slavery in America was practiced, as slave holders attempted to prevent human beings from learning to read, so slaves would not gain the mental capacity to advance their social position.  In the absence of thought, human beings of all color regulate themselves to collectivism and tribal behavior.  Public schools, especially in inner cities are more committed to political preservation and demographic bloc votes than lighting up the young minds of millions with the truth about Frederick Douglass.  That is………..until K Carl Smith came on the scene in 2009 with a message that threatens to ignite a revolution of conservatism in African-American circles and truly end the kind of education slavery that is currently under way in the world of politics.

Frederick Douglass (1817-1895), was an American abolitionist, orator, and writer, who escaped slavery and urged other blacks to do likewise before and during the American Civil War (1861-1865). He was born in Tuckahoe, Maryland, the son of a slave. In 1838 Douglass escaped slavery and reached New Bedford, Massachusetts. Following an antislavery convention in 1841, he became an agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. His work for the Underground Railroad, a network that helped slaves escape to free areas, did much to further the cause of the abolitionists and made his name a symbol of freedom.

In 1845 Douglass went to England to escape the danger of seizure under the Fugitive Slave Laws. His lectures on the question of slavery in the United States prompted his admirers to raise funds to purchase his freedom. After returning to the United States in 1847, Douglass became the leader of the Underground Railroad in Rochester, New York. There he established the abolitionist newspaper North Star, which he edited until 1860.

During the presidential election of 1860 Douglass campaigned for Abraham Lincoln. Following the outbreak of the American Civil War (1861-1865), he helped raise two regiments of black soldiers. After the war, Douglass fought for enactment of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. He later served in governmental positions, including U.S. minister to Haiti (1889-1891).[1]

Douglass supported the Republican Abraham Lincoln who finished the work started by Thomas Jefferson and other Founding Fathers in 1770 when Jefferson represented a slave in court arguing for his freedom stating “Under the law of nature, all men are born free.  Everyone comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will.  This is what is called personal liberty, and is giving him by the Author of Nature.” Tragically Jefferson lost the case.  In 1772, he also argued a similar case.  In 1773 and 1774 a number of American colonies, including Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania, passed antislavery laws, all of which were struck down by the King in 1774.  That year according to David Barton in his book The Jefferson Lies, Jefferson penned “A Summary View of the Rights of British America.”  His purpose was to remind the British that legitimate American concerns were being ignored—one of which was the king’s veto of American antislavery laws.  Jefferson wrote, “The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state (by Britain).  But previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations from Africa.  Yet our repeated attempts to effect this…have been hitherto defeated by His Majesty’s negative (veto).”  It was the King of England at the time who imposed slavery on America against the will and desires of people like Jefferson who inherited his slaves.  As considered property he could not release his slaves to the world to be free, but he could allow them to reside as such on his real estate—which was how many abolitionists were forced to conduct their rebellion against the King and England’s pro slave policies.

Anti-slavery was one of the key reasons for igniting the American Revolution, and if that act of rebellion had not occurred, it is most likely that slavery would still be openly practiced throughout the world.  The Founding Fathers started the dialogue and created the means for patriots like Frederick Douglas to escape slavery and help self-taught politicians like Abraham Lincoln get elected and fight the second part of the American Revolution, the final nail in the coffin of slavery, the Civil War.  It was capitalism that set the slaves free in the north by creating a Constitution that allowed for laissez-faire capitalism.  Machines, innovation, and improved manufacturing techniques allowed the north to show the world that production could be obtained without statism and forced breaking the chains of enslavement on the human mind for the first time in the history of the world, and the revolution of which Frederick Douglass participated in by helping Lincoln become President was one to wipe the last remnants of European slave culture off the North American continent once and for all.

However, jealous Europeans settled America after the War of 1812 and determined to end American independence with education instead of guns—as the later did not work as the British were again defeated in 1815 for good by Andrew Jackson and a band of hearty pirates lead by Jean Lafitte (c. 1776 – c. 1823)  These Victorians entered New England and brought with them the work of Karl Marx and a not so disguised notion of new slavery through the destruction of capitalism in favor of a political system that would preserve European domination of the world through socialism.  As Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln worked to free the slaves, European socialists immigrating into the United States seeking work as educators sought the return of all human beings to the psychological chains of socialism.   The chains of slavery had evolved simply from literal chains to the mental ones of progressivism.   The intent of both was to control the thoughts of mankind in service to collective ideology.

When K Carl Smith spoke in his speech about modern slavery, this was his frame of reference.  When racism is used by the political left and progressive groups to hold as a rally cry historical revision completely made up by left-leaning educators to hold the demographic voting bloc of African-Americans they are practicing modern slavery that is little different from the slavery practiced by the American South sanctioned by the King of England prior to the Revolutionary War.  When public education deliberately attempts to manipulate history, or deny knowledge to young people, especially young African-Americans so that they will vote for Barack Obama because of skin color and loyalty to civil rights causes ignoring the obvious commitment of the American President to socialism, they are guilty of modern slavery.  The practice of teaching revisionist history is no different from the slave owner who prevented their slaves from learning to read so they could keep them ignorant, and thus dependent on the master for their life and earnings.  Any political group that attempts to hold the mind of another in a suppressed state is guilty of slavery and in modern politics, it happens all the time.  This is what K Carl Smith is fighting against, the modern slavery of suppressing the human mind from thinking, and knowing history and the realities of the American Constitution.

When a statist regime, such as what the current American government is, attempts to pay women to have babies, take control of their health care, their financial resources, and even their housing, the government is performing the same task as the slave master who tells their slaves that it is they who puts a roof over their head, feeds them, and gives them life.  The slave master can continue this only if they keep those slaves from knowing the truth, from learning to read or interacting with other minds.  The ghettos of inner cities are in the state they are not because the people who live there are free, but because they are still slaves.  The real shackles and whips that were used in the past to draw blood have been traded in for ignorance preached in public schools, and financial dependency which arrives in their mailboxes in the form of a check from government.   In this way, the chains are not needed, because the minds of the slave have been suppressed so that they never stray too far from their mailboxes, where the money arrives.  In return, the slave holding government gets not labor, but votes so that they can continue to stay in office for the same intimidating reasons that the King of England denied Jefferson the abolition of slaves in 1770.  The goal of all statist governments is to convince their slaves to do their labor under coercion for the strategic aims of the ruling minority.  The slaves can be literal, or figurative, but the behavior and aims are all the same.  K Carl Smith is preaching against modern slavery, and is using the example of Frederick Douglass to bring freedom to all men and women of all colors, and it was a pleasure to hear him speak.  He is a wonderful advocate of freedom that is performing a monumental modern feat that is in essence the third step of removing slavery from the world.  K Carl Smith is attacking through his Frederick Douglass Republicans the notion that slavery of a human being is not being done today in the traditional sense, but through the human mind, and real freedom begins and ends there.  It is his effort to break that slavery once and for all in the African-American communities and for that he is a modern hero that will earn a place in history comparable to the giants of history hitherto mentioned.

Read more at K Carl Smith’s website

http://frederickdouglassrepublican.com/Walter Williams

[1]Encarta® 98 Desk Encyclopedia © &  1996-97 Microsoft Corporation.

All rights reserved.

Rich Hoffman

166701_584023358276159_1119605693_n“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The Untapped Money of Hollywood: Rebels WITH a Cause–A strategy guide for conservative eyes only

I enjoyed the Academy Awards presentation of 2013 for most of the broadcast over 1 billion people viewed until Michelle Obama presented the award for Best Picture.  Her presence reminded me of the cozy relationship Hollywood has with the American version of communism in the Democratic Party.  Jack Nicolson who has become a Hollywood legend playing pot headed hippies, crazy people, and ghost ridden psychopaths obviously enjoyed the rub against the conservative right as he presented Michelle Obama’s bang engulfed face on a big screen television.  However, up to that Best Picture category, I enjoyed the Oscars, because I love movies.  I love all movies, liberal ones, conservative ones, and films that are about all forms of life.  Personally I was rooting for Lincoln to do well, but I also admired the work of Ben Affleck in Argo, and I really think a lot of Ang Lee as a filmmaker—so I was very excited to see Life of Pie do so well.  But there was nothing that grabbed my heart more than the live performance of Skyfall by Adele, which won an Oscar for Best Original Song.

Normally I have learned to overlook the obvious shortcomings of Hollywood which were subtly evident in Seth MacFarlane’s presentation of the Oscars.  Being a fan of Family Guy, I am used to Seth’s atheist views and tendency to lean in progressive directions, but I deeply admire his talent, so I can enjoy his work without going crazy about his politics.  He did a good job as a host of the Academy Awards, and I appreciated his satirical song about an issue I pointed out over a year ago, that Best Actresses for the Academy usually get there by showing their breasts in a film.  MacFarlane performed a very funny song titled, “We Saw Your Boobs.” From a distance it looks like Hollywood tried very hard to show that they don’t take themselves too seriously.  MacFarlane poked fun at Hollywood in typical roast fashion which is customary with jokes about cocaine trees, orgies at Jack Nicholson’s house, and references to the mythical Jewish control of Hollywood.  But less obvious was the desire to prove that all the participants were less than perfect human beings, as MacFarlane made fun of his own film Ted in 2012, and Ben Affleck discussed the need to not hold grudges.  These are the under cover elements of progressivism that have plagued Hollywood since the 1950s, and were kept very restrained until the revelation of Michelle Obama splattered the issue in front of everyone left watching at 11:30 PM on a Sunday night.

Hollywood however is not about progressive causes and much of the best of what Hollywood has to offer was not present at the Academy Awards.  Dark Knight Rises was openly snubbed most likely due to the fact that the plot line was critical to collective politics.  The villain Bane was the essence of what many on the political right fear about Obama in present day reality.  So it didn’t go unnoticed that there wasn’t a single award nomination for Warner Brothers billion dollar money-maker.  There was a slight nod to The Avengers, and the entire evening was dedicated to 50 years of James Bond.  It was during the moments of James Bond celebration that many of the Hollywood elite in the audience had glazy faces from the powerful musical performances of Adele from Skyfall and Shirley Bassey from Goldfinger.  It was great to see Shirley again, her voice has rung in my ears for many years, and I wasn’t the only one taken by her performance.  She sang with great power, but more than that, it was the thoughts of James Bond that her voice and that of Adele evoked which is what Hollywood was built on in the first place.  James Bond, like many action heroes are theatrical manifestations of the Übermensch.

 

The Übermensch (German for “Overman, Overhuman, Above-Human, Superman, Super-human”; German pronunciation: [ˈˀyːbɐmɛnʃ]) is a concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche posited the Übermensch as a goal for humanity to set for itself in his 1883 book Thus Spoke Zarathustra (German: Also Sprach Zarathustra).  Hollywood finds itself a kind of Doctor Jeckle and Mr. Hyde personality in that they publicly celebrate progressive causes like drug addiction, human weakness, casual sex, and openly intrusive government—which was the idea of presenting Mother Michelle Obama at the end of the broadcast.  Hollywood however makes its money off of exceptionalism, and is the soul reason that directors like Ang Lee make movies for the big studios instead of in Europe, or Asia.   Hollywood is the creation of exceptionalism and the stories are specific to American thought.  The Academy urges more progressive films to be produced to fit their ideological pursuits, but Hollywood makes its money off films like Dark Knight Rises, any Bruce Willis film, and films that have Übermensch’s as the protagonist.  Movie goers do not like weak kneed heroes, they want the Übermensch.  James Bond is super-human, he is not a man who has all the normal emotional weaknesses, which has been an issue with this new Daniel Craig Bond—until Skyfall.  Bond is a man of exception, he is the best of the best and that is why tears flowed at the end of Bassey’s performance of Goldfinger.  “Little girl, beware of his web of sin,………………….but don’t go in.”

Considering that Return of the King won Best Picture just a few short years ago, it was shocking that The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey didn’t have more nominations.  But for those who know the labor backlash over The Hobbit being filmed in Wellington, New Zealand it should come as no surprise. Hollywood holds grudges.  They hold them against George Lucas for his independence of the Hollywood system, they hold grudges against James Cameron for declaring that he “Was king of the world.” Hollywood holds grudges against Mel Gibson for making The Passion of the Christ.  So Ben Affleck almost let out too much when he accepted his award, and quickly composed himself on discussing grudges in Hollywood.  Big players in Hollywood know that they must play by the rule of progressivism if they want to continue working—even the biggest names.  Notice that Clint Eastwood wasn’t there this year after coming out in favor of Mitt Romney in the last election and calling President Obama “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”  Hollywood offers a seat at the table for those who fall in line, and takes the seat away at the Oscars for those who don’t follow the party line.  True superstars like Eastwood, Bruce Willis—who just came out in favor of the Second Amendment, and Sylvester Stallone were not shown walking the red carpet this year, even though films from those actors will be watched on televisions many years into the future while films like Argo will be forgotten along with Black Hawk Down, and The Deer Hunter.

http://www.nme.com/filmandtv/news/peter-jackson-expects-the-hobbit-oscar-snub/292903

Hollywood shoots itself in the foot by aligning themselves with progressive politicians like Michelle and Barack Obama.  But Hollywood, especially above the line, loves glittery lights, and Democrats are better at presenting glitter than Republicans.  So Hollywood—at least the elite that are always present at the Oscars are in bed with Democratic politicians because they all love the pretty lights and glitter that those politicians offer.  Republicans fail because they expect to be judged on substance, but Hollywood can’t even judge the best among them correctly without politics getting in the way.

For me even bigger than Adele’s performance of Skyfall was Hal Needham the stuntman and director of films like Smokey and the Bandit and Hooper winning a special Academy Award he very well deserved.  Needham is a man I personally admire, so it was good to see him finally get an Oscar for his long career of work.  It wasn’t a surprise to me that Seth MacFarlane did a comedy skit with Sally Field at the beginning where he asked her on a date in a Trans Am and everyone instantly recognized the role that will forever define her in Smokey and the Bandit.  That film would have never happened without the effort and expert stunt work of Hal Needham.  Sally Field won’t be remembered as the mother of Forest Gump, or the wife of Lincoln or any of her other fantastic acting roles over many years—she will always be known as Frog from Smokey and the Bandit, because the Bandit was an Übermensch and society loves their overman heroes.

When I saw the mug of Michelle Obama speaking from The White House I instantly wondered why Hollywood was allowed to get away with such an audacious display of affection.  But I instantly knew the answer.  Conservatives who have a lot of money do not spend their money on film production.  They buy oil wells, real estate, and other traditional investments, but when it comes to film, they do not put their money where their mouth is, and because of it, have lost their message to investors who think progressive causes are the correct path.  That is why Hollywood is in bed with the political left.    Actors like Jack Nicholson will be anything you want them to be for the right price, and in Hollywood the money comes from progressive investors.  The relationship is so cozy that for the first time, the wife of a President announced the Best Picture at the Academy Awards.  Conservatives could have a seat at the table and compete directly with progressives if only they learned to put some of their money into film production so that they could at least play the public relations game, which they are now losing without a fight.   The boldest attempt in my opinion during 2012 was Atlas Shrugged Part II.  But not enough conservatives supported the film, leaving the producers hanging on the vine alone. 

I spend a lot of time considering the implications of the film industry because movies whether we like it or not shape our culture more than any other modern factor.  The values of our society do come out of Hollywood, and so long as the trend leans toward progressivism, conservative causes will always waver in the eyes of the public.  But it doesn’t have to be that way.  All it takes is an understanding of what forces are at play, and I have put them forth here for analysis.  The world doesn’t want more art films to inspire them to political leanings.  They want more Skyfall, and more Adele.  They want more Bruce Willis and crave Clint Eastwood to tell somebody to “Make My Day.”  They want more Incredible Hulks to grab a villain by the head and fling them about like a rag doll only to utter, “Puny God.”  Worldwide film audiences want to see a woman like Sally Field play not Lincoln’s wife but to put on the wedding dress once again and run off on a high-speed adventure with a cowboy wearing Übermensch named Bandit.  Human beings crave to be more than what they currently are, and they want their movies to reflect that desire.  But such acknowledgments do not come because conservatives have lost the fight in Hollywood at their own peril or that Jack and the gang flaunted reality at the close of the program with Obama’s face to send conservatives to bed with nightmares of socialism. They come like all things in life, with understanding–he who has the gold rules, and conservatives have contributed very little gold to Hollywood and therefore find themselves ruled by liberals in entertainment and politics.  They are caught in a vice between the two, and wonder how it happened when their ideas are sounder and more statistically proficient.  But that is a situation that could change easily, if only conservatives would get the message.

Meanwhile, I’m going to go listen to Adele’s Skyfall on my iPod about 2 million more times and contemplate the importance of the Übermensch in human culture.  I will also dedicate my time, money and resources not to the orgy seekers who wanted to partake in mashed potato sex at Jack Nicholson’s house after the Academy Awards, but the Rebels With A Cause who are emerging as the new counter-culture in America.  It is there that the new heart of Hollywood resides and the fate of our country and world.  The new cool is not the Obama loving pot smoking, Che wearing actor from Beverly Hills, it is the conservative from the Midwest who walks like John Wayne, utters one liners like Clint Eastwood, and articulates an idea like Ronald Reagan.  That is where the country’s salvation resides, and the real money that Hollywood could make if they didn’t eat like pets from the hands of ultra progressives who have finally taken over the Oscars and began to hand out Best Picture awards………..and laugh about it like it’s hip.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/26/theblaze-magazine-special-report-conservatism-is-the-new-counterculture/

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Stuart Freeborn Becomes One With “The Force”: How ‘Star Wars’ is the real life ‘Atlas Shrugged’

Stuart Freeborn died at 98 years old recently, but he will forever live in the character of Yoda from the popular Star Wars stories.  Freeborn was already an old man when he designed Yoda as a character puppet in 1979 for the Star Wars film The Empire Strikes Back and without question put many of his own features into the face of the great science fiction philosopher.  It doesn’t take much imagination to see Stuart Freeborn in the face of Yoda as the character has evolved from a puppet to a digital character in the prequel trilogies to the current fantastic cartoon series Clone Wars on the Cartoon Network.  Yoda is the embodiment of Stuart Freeborn and will reflect for all the years going forth the best that the movie business has to contribute to the magic of mythmaking.  For the latest incantation of Stuart Freeborn’s creation you can see Yoda this Saturday February 9th, 2013 in the latest Clone Wars episode filled the with the usual perilous drama mixed with political betrayals that aren’t so science fiction if placed in parallel to our current society.

I place a high level of credit for the success of Star Wars on the back of Stuart Freeborn.  If the puppet he designed didn’t work in The Empire Strikes Back, the movie would have fallen on its face stopping the saga in its tracks after the second movie.  The gamble that George Lucas took with his own money to make that classic science fiction film would have went up in flames if the audience did not accept Yoda as a believable character and all the magic that is currently falling like snow flakes upon our culture today.  Star Wars would have gone out like a candle flame on a brisk day almost before it ever got started.

I have covered in great detail, especially lately Star Wars importance not just mythologically—which equates out to cultural improvements–but in economics.  I am sure George Lucas and his collaboration with other filmmakers would cringe in trying to explain to their Marin County neighbors how what they’ve done at Skywalker Ranch in California has a lot more to do with Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged than the traditional Hollywood moochers who attempt to duplicate the quality of the Star Wars Franchise.  As the political left hates Ayn Rand, it is obvious that quietly in the rolling hills of Central California, the values of Ayn Rand are celebrated in great abundance at Skywalker Ranch under hushed voices and public denials.   The falsification is that Ayn Rand was a selfish witch and that Star Wars is about self-sacrifice and altruism.  That is why everyone gets it wrong.   The growing assembly of excellent creative talent gathering at Skywalker Ranch from Industrial Light and Magic to some of the most original music composition in our modern times is leaps and bounds beyond anything else being done in entertainment.  As far as make-up designers Stuart Freeborn was the best of the best and his impact on human culture will forever be measured by his original designs in Star Wars characters like Yoda and Chewbacca.  Freeborn like the wonderful characters in Ayn Rand’s great novel is one of the exceptional in his field of endeavor and it was ultimately George Lucas’s creation that allowed Freeborn the freedom to step beyond the restrictions of social dogma and unleash creations that propel the power of myth into mass culture with magnificently positive results.

The same people who complain that the Disney merger with Lucasfilm is one of a deplorable exploitation of capitalism also complain about the moral justification of Ayn Rand’s novels—particularly Atlas Shrugged.  These personalities have been so embedded with socialism and the values of collectivism that they are unable to see the real power and message behind myth and the businesses it takes to deliver them.  I have spoken about a vacation that my wife and I took playing the MMO video game Star Wars: The Old Republic (CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW).  We spent move than six weeks continuously enjoying that game for hours upon hours every day together doing the work of the Jedi Council by solving problems in that galaxy far, far away.  One of the problems with the massive BioWare game is that they have an XP (experience points) level cap of 50, which takes most players who spend a large amount of time on the game about two months to reach.  Obsessive players can reach that cap within a month.  At level 50, XP points no longer awarded, and for many they lose interest in the game because they no longer get the reward of earning XP for their game playing investments.  So these players have been dropping their subscriptions forcing BioWare to find creative ways to convince players over level 50 to continue their memberships.  This is what is called “game economy” and reflects accurately real life behavior.  If citizens are taxed too much, or do not get to keep what they earn while working, they stop working, they stop being productive, and every kind creative input comes to a halt.  Without incentives, gamers in The Old Republic lose interest if they can’t earn XP or large amounts of game credits and things to buy with them.  Gamers who drop their subscriptions when they lose interest in playing the game without earning XP are proving Ayn Rand correct when the heroes of the classic novel Atlas Shrugged quit participating in America because taxes became too great.  They abandoned socialism in the book and embraced the freedom of Galt’s Gulch (Atlantis).

Star Wars is all about generating wealth, not just in the economic numbers that the films, books, television shows, and retail merchandise generate for Lucasfilm and Disney as major corporations.  But wealth is also generated as so many people desire the material, because they NEED mythologies that properly reflect the world they live in.  CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT THE POWER OF MYTH.  The move that Lucas made in selling his company to Disney was one that would allow him to expand the Star Wars mythology to fulfill the market demands of his product, which in many ways resided on the shoulders of Stuart Freeborn over thirty years ago.  If George Lucas is the John Galt of the Star Wars saga—READ ATLAS SHRUGGED TO UNDERSTAND, then Stuart Freeborn was the Hank Reardon who made a product so good that nobody could equal his efforts—and the power of that creation is about to explode upon our modern culture in a way that is unfathomable.  Trust me.

This is why I am spending so much time discussing Star Wars.  There is nothing in our culture that captures all the elements of modern life the way that Star Wars mythology does not just spiritually, but economically, politically, and ethically.  On both the business side of Star Wars and the creative side it represents the very best of the absolute best of all those individuals who make the Disney company, Lucasfilm, Industrial Light and Magic and the dozens and dozens of support companies that trickle down off them the best in their businesses.  It should come as no surprise that the values of Yoda as expressed in the Star Wars stories are so popular that stand alone films of Stuart Freeborn’s characters are going to get their own films in addition to the completion of Episodes 7, 8, and 9.  Yoda is getting his own film apparently, and Han Solo and Chewbacca are getting their own films in addition to the Joe Johnston creation of Boba Fett.

It is because of creative geniuses like Stuart Freeborn that Yoda has become over a thirty year period such a powerful character who might well surpass Mickey Mouse as the most recognizable iconic character in human history.  Yoda was created by a wise old man who went on to live till the age of 98 and brought joy to many millions during his lifetime.   But in his passing, Stuart Freeborn will live on and become stronger than anybody can possibly imagine, as his character of Yoda will carry Star Wars into a new dimension of entertainment experience in producing the myths that society lives by giving a rebirth to a new and prosperous century that nobody saw coming.

How do I know?  Well, read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and understand that “A is A.”  Once the value of “A” is known, then the addition of values can be added up and determined as an end result.  Star Wars is about values in every way that they can be defined.  And the grandfather of those values were people like Stuart Freeborn.  He will be missed, but his memory will live on forever—like all Jedi who find themselves one with the Force.

To my readers here, people like Stuart Freeborn and Paul Harvey mean a lot to me, so it is only right to pay tribute to them when the times come.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The Bullies of Public Education: A cry out for help while few listen

When it is wondered what I have against public education and government in general, I can understand that unless people have seen what I have up close and personal that they may not have context to relate with.  Few people look too deeply at any problem, and it requires a cavernous look to understand why public education and their employees are bad for society at large–why they are detrimental to the human condition.  Most people are happy to accept out of convenience the opposite–that public education is the savor of society’s children and their parents because government schools offer a glorified babysitting service that has a subtle social engineering objective driven by progressive politics.  My problem with public education and the government, of which they are an important part, is that they are filled with participants who are bullies seeking to impose evil with a thug-like imposition of submission against individuals to a collective sum.

Since I stepped into the public education debate in the spring and fall of 2010 with a logical argument against excessive spending I have had many bullies attempt to conform me into some type of collective submission.  Those bullies have learned, what over 40 years of a blood soaked past filled with similar bullies have learned about me—that it only gets them more name-calling and violence, not less.  In my entire 45 years on this earth I have never backed down from a bully no matter how big or powerful they thought themselves to be and I won’t start now.  And there have been a lot of them.  Anyone who does some checking into my past has come to that conclusion on their own by now.  I never look for these fights, but they happen because I refuse to be moved by any collective force whether it is the federal government, or an entire city’s police force who is taking money off the top of drug sales using kids to sell marijuana to high schools.  For me the individual will of every American citizen is the most sacred element of existence and I do not like to see individuals twisted and manipulated into the will of any collective organization no matter what it is.  This is why I hate governments, I hate mobsters, I don’t like authority when it seeks to break the back of individuals for some “greater good,” and this is what I have discovered public education to be completely about—breaking down the individual will in children and forcing their parents to pay for it with public extortion.

I would not care so much about the activity of public education evils if I were not “forced” to pay for it, but because of the collective extortion practice called “taxation” I have no choice, so my only recourse is to confront the bullies—which I have done.  However, when you get involved and start fighting these bullies, and others see you doing it, you learn about all the individual cases of institutional bullying that are going on around you.  I have met since 2010 many victims of public education bullying where the institutions and its servants impose themselves upon the free-will of many individuals.  Often I have taken up the banner and offered to fight on behalf of those individuals making some of the fights very public which of course attracts more people from all over Ohio who send me their stories and want help fighting their individual circumstances.  The posting I provided yesterday is one of those stories.  A family was a victim of institutional manipulation and cover-ups designed to protect the careers of the participants at the expense of a little girl whom I became quite found of in my dealings with the family.  The family eventually left the state to start a new life elsewhere, and I can’t blame them.  I helped them the best I could, but the institutional imposition of public education is an ominous beast that doesn’t give a damn about the little girl or the family—it only wants to fill its belly with the lives of individuals.

I continue to get these pleas for help, and they have only increased over the years.  I would hope that they would trend down, not up, but in the case of a letter I received the other day shown below, they are getting worse.  When I read this letter I immediately felt for this family.  I hate to hear that a family is about to lose their home, that their children won’t have a place to lay their head at night and study in comfort.  I hate to hear that the Social Security tax increases that went into effect at the start of 2013 are putting a family like the one below under financially—that they are only able to buy groceries by charging them on their credit card.  I hate to hear that they are trying to fight their school levy just so they can keep their house because an extra $20 a week will crush them, because they’ve already given up their cable TV, and their home phone as needless expenses.  And I hate that the only place a family like the one shown below feels they can turn to is my email box. Read the letter for yourself.  They are from a school district in central Ohio.  I removed their name and district for their own protection.

From: ********** **************
Date: Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 9:38 PM
Subject: Re: School levy
To: Rich Hoffman

Hi Mr, Hoffman, I would really love for you to contact me. I am currently fighting my school against our levy; I am currently tied up in a law suit because I made a political website for voting no on this levy in November. I am speaking for all the poor families that cannot afford anymore money being taken from us. Our so-called American dream is becoming a nightmare, my family can no longer afford our home due to the over spending and taxing of others on my husband’s paycheck and the schools using our home as their personal ATM.  I feel like I am fighting a losing battle, the school board wont listen to anything my family has to say. Can you please contact me with some advice because the school is putting up the next levy for May voting. My family needs your help!!! I am in the ****** school district, I am being sued by the campaign manager for the schools vote yes party, I was banned along with two other woman for asking questions, nothing out of line just general questions, so I made a Vote No Facebook page, the law suit is not my concern so much as I do have an amazing attorney, but more my concern is with them trying to pull this levy off again after it was voted down in November by an 11% margin. I am treated poorly by the board anytime I ask questions when the only thing I am trying to do is keep the quality of life at home for families like mine, you see we no longer even have the money to go to see a simple movie with our children, we have already eliminated cable TV, home phone service, the only thing we still have is the internet, it is required as I do have one home schooled child due to the levy in November, I felt scared and did not want my son to be under the conditions at school so I pulled him out. I don’t feel like I can defeat these people, they do not care about families like mine. I know that the first week of 2013 our first paycheck was again short another $63.00 when we currently did not have extra money and the school just wont quit they say they are short revenue, but my house hold is also short revenue so how do they expect to get blood from a turnip, we are wiped out financially and our home is already on the chopping block, if it does not sell by April we may be forced to give it back to the bank. I am so frustrated as a parent I feel so sorry for my children and others children in our situation, while the school admin drives around in their fancy cars and living it up in those fancy houses when so many in our district are losing their homes.  I know all of 2012 we had to use credit cards to buy groceries with to feed the kids. Something’s gotta’ give! Please help the families in this district!

When people wonder why I get so angry at the arrogance that is seen in public education it is because I’ve seen one too many letters like the one above.  I am tired of a media that refuses to look at what high taxes do to families like the one who wrote me the letter.  I am tired of putting school employees who work for progressive labor unions on a pedestal and listening to newspapers and television broadcasts advocate on their behalf when the taxes raised for these public schools are destroying the lives of the tax base and nobody does the hard reporting, because nobody wants to face down the bullies in public education.  These bullies think the court system is in their back pocket and nobody will have the guts to call them out into the light.  When I came unglued last year in the Cincinnati Enquirer it was because the bullies were making their move at a cost to many families like the one shown above.  The levy supporters don’t give one bit of a damn if 100 families lose their homes to the tax increases, so long as they get their way.  In my life it was people like Laura Sanders at Lakota who sent me letters advocating for higher taxes that infuriated me with their unfathomable selfishness and narrow-minded perspective.  CLICK HERE FOR A REVIEW.  I can pick on Laura because she had the nerve to send me personal emails attempting to belittle the value of my own home compared to her own as if to apply pressure on me into believing my tax contribution was less than hers.  She also gave an interview in the Cincinnati Enquirer attempting to smear my name because I stood between her and a YES vote for a tax increase by playing the “women hater card” that worked so well against Mitt Romney—only I’m not Mitt Romney.  Her position was that she was willing to pay more taxes, so why wasn’t I?  It’s the same progressive argument that Barack Obama made against the rich, “if a wealthy guy like me is willing to pay more taxes, then why aren’t you?”  That is how these people work, and this is why parents are afraid of the public castigation from people like Laura at church on Sunday finding themselves charging their food for their families on a credit card so that they aren’t called “cheap” by the collective masses who advocate more money thrown into the black hole of public education.

With every letter I get like the one above I increasingly hate the system that advocates more and more of that behavior. I used to be able to maintain enough distance to coolly lay out the argument of why public education has a spending problem, but when they responded to my suggestions with thuggish resistance—well, it only pissed me off.  Once it was realized that logic was not welcome in the public education debate, and that the institutional commitment toward collectivism sought to stamp out the lives of couples like the one above, that was the end for me.

I am not impressed with Governor Kasich’s new public education funding model.  I see that he has given in to the bullies of Columbus and my respect for him is much less than it was.  I commend him for trying to do something, and I think he thinks he’s being clever about his education reforms.  But in the end, he will lose because he is afraid to punch those bullies square in the mouth like they deserve.  Bullies are bullies when they attempt to impose upon individuals a collective goal, and I have absolutely no tolerance for it—at all.  I never have, and I never will—the more I see of it, the worse it gets.  With that said if you are a member of the media reading this and you side against the kind of people who sent me the letter above by giving a free media pass to the thugs who cause the trouble, you are as bad as the bullies—because you participate in the destruction of families everywhere one dollar at a time till they are going bankrupt because of a $63 dollar tax increase out of their personal income in 2013.  Nobody is looking out for them, and that is truly a sad, and a terrible story in modern America.

I’m sure that people who support school levies from the teachers and administrators to the PTA moms that I have had so much fun with don’t know about families like the one above. They don’t want to know, until tragedy strikes their families with a major lay-off, or another form of income loss.  Instead of trying to act as individuals they hedge their bets by befriending the bosses of the collective—who fuel their lives off tax dollars funneled by government.  The real motive of collectivism is to hedge against the danger of being an individual, so they have no care for those who have decided to live on their own merit—who fall on hard times.  Secretly, they desire to see families like this crushed leaving them no place to turn but a stranger who has a tendency to stand up to bullies hoping that they can do something on their behalf.  The collective seeks to make an example of individuals who try to go it alone—like the family above has.  To the collective, resistance is futile, and they love to see families suffer who are not part of their public education clique.

I have been shocked as my daughter and her husband have been house hunting to learn how many $170K to $250K homes are empty of their former residents.  10 years ago so many homes in foreclosure were a rare sight that had behind them a social stigma that was negative.  It absolutely breaks my heart to walk through these homes and see that the residents left in haste with televisions, refrigerators and toys left behind.  In some cases pictures are still on the walls, and these are not isolated homes.  Most of the homes are in this condition and it is a sign of bad times that aren’t just coming—but already here.  Those homes are proof that there are many who are in the exact same situation as the couple above.  The only difference is that the woman who wrote me had the courage to face public scrutiny by admitting that her family is struggling while the others were reluctant to admit such things publicly.  Most of them probably kept their financial situation a secret till the very end, till they had to leave their home so fast that they couldn’t even take their pictures down off the walls.  For everyone who participates in such an erosion of freedom, they are bullies who deserve their asses kicked, and not tomorrow, but today!  I despise such people.  The root of my anger is in the knowledge that they are willing to see individual lives crushed so long as the collective good can be maintained and I find that absolutely evil.  So I do not care what those on the “other” side think of me.  I do not care if they want an interview from me, or if they even want to be cordial with me.  I only want to see collectivism crushed under the boot of individualism and the first step in that is to stand up to the bullies of collectivism in glorious fashion—something I’m prepared to do and have spent a lifetime nurturing.  For those who hope that I will run out of gas—sorry to say—my engine just warmed up.  The fuel I run on is letters like the one above.  Families like that deserve justice, and if there is any good in the world, they will eventually have it.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The American Housewife: Backbone of our nation and families everywhere

For those who bought a copy of my new book Tail of the Dragon during the fourth quarter of 2012, you helped bring a small bit of joy to my family this past Christmas, and for that I thank you.  While I finished the novel I avoided the fun stuff I typically enjoy like playing Xbox and computer games because I had a schedule to meet.  Once the book came out in September and I did a little media for it, I felt I could take the time to enjoy life a little bit before getting too serious about the next one—which is in outline form now.  My wife had wanted to play an MMO with me called The Old Republic but it required us to purchase two high-end computers instead of having just one, so we could play at the same time.  The other computer we have is dedicated to my business ventures and the work that goes into this blog site daily, so my wife hadn’t been getting much computer time after her other computer had a terminal malfunction some time ago.  To play that new game I would have to buy two desktop PC’s, as tablets or lap tops wouldn’t be powerful enough in this particular case.  We would need personal computers that could run on the high-end and that would be costly.  There always seemed to be more important things to spend a few thousand dollars on, so the computers were put on the very back burner. I didn’t even want to think about something fun until the book was out, and we put a new roof on our home before winter hit, so she waited patiently.  She felt bad wanting to spend so much money just to play a video game, so she didn’t push it—but after the fourth quarter sales closed, I secretly put aside a little bit of money and bought us both two new super computers for Christmas which my kids and I surprised her with on Christmas Day.  Click the video below to see her reaction.

Much of the time it is my wife who does all the nice things for the family, so she is seldom surprised by anybody doing something nice for her.  But this year was different.  We’ve always been a traditional family where she maintained the home and I maintained work relationships, so we didn’t have the modern benefit of a dual income household to just throw money at our whims.  That benefit is something that we have both vehemently rejected out of dedication to providing for our children, and now grandchildren a constant loving female presence in their lives which far outweighs any monetary value.

I have been called a sexist my entire life because of my almost Amish-like adherence to traditional family values.  My wife has been called far worse because she has so obviously rejected the feminist movement of independence from men.  In our marriage which is coming up on a quarter century now, our household runs like many did in America during 1920 through 1950.  I treat her respectfully, she participates in politics equally, and she controls all our family income.  She cooks, cleans–is the family psychologist, maintains all the relationships with the extended family—her job is a difficult, thankless one. There is no prestige for the American woman who dedicates herself as a housewife and in my mind there is no job more important in the entire world.  My wife didn’t have a career, when our children needed to be homeschooled.  When my kids were little, my wife was a room mother at their school, and the teachers turned against her when during the fourth grade consensus emerged that all the little girls of that age needed to learn how to put a condom on a fake penis as part of sex education.  We of course declined to sign the permission form and the teachers retaliated.  Soon the administrators learned through the teacher’s lounge that my wife was “one of those women,” one of those “trouble makers,” so they made it difficult for her to even pick my kids up from school, because my kids did not ride the school bus.  (Yes, my kids were too good to ride the school bus with the other kids.  My wife drove them to and from school every single day of their schooling lives.)   My wife had resisted a progressive platform so the school circled the wagons to push her out.  We responded by pulling our kids out of the school.  We were able to pull the trigger when it was needed due to political pressure in the school district of Mason many years ago because my wife did not have a career—a commitment to a business interest outside of our family home.  If I had a quarter for all the times family and friends told us that we were wrong in our approach to raising our children, we’d be millionaires rolling in rooms full of those quarters.  Much of that advice we were given by well-intentioned people had its source with daytime television and talk shows like Opera who we now know was intensely committed to the spread of progressive ideas.  Their advice was wrong even though the masses seemed all to agree on those feminist statements.   It has never been easy because the rest of society was going in a noticeably different direction and we were openly rebelling against the progressive political attack against American tradition.  For a woman to stay home and care for her family in a traditional manner from 1990 to 2010 seemed to be the vilest insult against progressivism, judging by the insults that came in our direction.  So the older we have grown, the more flagrant we have flaunted our position, especially once we learned the source of the advice.

As discussed at this site in great detail modern progressivism is all about destroying the American version of family, so it should come as no surprise that children share authority between their government schools and their parents which leads to much of the misguided rebellion many young people cast against their parents.  It is also no surprise that divorce rates are so high because both spouses are dedicated to goals outside the family unit, and women have been told they must be equal to men in the workplace.  The progressive strategy has been to remove the heart of the family—women and demean them into pursuing male-like career goals—which are empty social acceptance roles that offer very little real substance.  The goal of this aimless existence is to put the faith Americans used to commit to individual family strength and instead invest into it faith towards government.  In my traditional view, American women are the government; they are the only government that matters.  They rule America’s households and in our family, nothing happens without the approval of my wife.  She even has legislative power over every oil change I conduct on our various vehicles.  I don’t buy anything without her approval, which is how it should be.

On the other side of the coin, for over 20 years now I have had to strive to make enough family income to compensate for two college educated adults because that’s what it costs to get through modern life.  Most of the time I pull off that task with extra revenue generating activity like writing books, designing t-shirts, or other types of creative enterprise.  In my younger days I worked various part-time jobs to pay the bills and sometimes rode a bicycle everywhere as we went for years with only one car that my wife needed to use for driving the kids to school.  At one point I rode 12 miles one way to work every day for over 1 year on a first shift job and worked a second job on the way home that helped divide up the return mileage to something less exhausting.  I’d peddle the remaining 6 miles home in the rain, snow, and extreme heat at around midnight and would start the whole thing again at 5 AM the next day.  I never missed work, or got sick, because I couldn’t afford to.  Sometimes the money has been easy, sometimes it was very hard, but always we have managed to keep my wife as the hub of the family and there is no government that supersedes her.  I have always put my wife on a pedestal because that is where women deserve to be.  They are not equal to men, they are bigger, better, and sweeter—and deserve to be cared for with love and understanding.

This brings us back to Christmas, for the first time in our lives, my wife wanted a vacation with me that involved actual time spent together—not on a tour bus through Europe, or on a Gondola in Venice being pushed around the canals by a heavily fragranced Italian man who looks like he’d rather be making meat balls. She wanted me to spend “time” with her—not writing books, not working on politics, not practicing bullwhips, or even back-woods hiking.  She wanted to spend time with me, and since she loves Star Wars, there was no better way to spend that time than with an MMO dedicated to Star Wars that requires thousands of hours of partnership.  But in order to play an MMO with another person, two computers are needed, and that cost is typically prohibitive for such a luxury item.

The gift was more symbolic than fiscal because it was a commitment to time spent rather than a dollar value—although to arrive at that moment it did require a significant financial investment.  The computers had to be powerful because we know family members who have tried to play The Old Republic on a single core processor and fried their video cards from the excessive heat generated, even with the graphics turned all the way down.  Because we both love Star Wars we wanted to play the game with full graphics resolution—(which are fabulous by the way), and we still wanted computing power to spare.  So my son-in-law and I overdid all the specs and built the computers seen in the video above.  My wife didn’t think it was possible because a few months earlier we had spoken to a Best Buy consultant about the amount of money it would take to buy computers that would play the game the way we wanted to play it, and his response was frustrating.  He gave us a cost of nearly $4000 for two computers.  Frustrated because we still needed a new roof, a dishwasher, and a number of other important daily items, we put it on the very back burner to revisit a few years down the road.

Over this past weekend my wife pointed out to me that we have now played The Old Republic for 20 straight days and we are only just getting started.  Our average playing time is 5 to 8 hours per session.  Saturday we played the game for 18 hours straight—no interruptions.  My kids are all playing the game and my son-in-law who built those computers built one just like them for my one of my daughters while he beefed up his to match the specs.  We have all played together and we have been playing with extended family members from out-of-state and it is everything that we hoped it would be.  When my wife saw that she had unlimited computing power it wasn’t because of the pretty lights or status of having a new expensive gift.  It was in being able to spend time with the people she loves in a game environment that she adores.  The computers are simply a means to get there, and in this case, the powerful machines are designed to operate without limitations that prohibit such an experience.

The first thing that people reading this will ask is how can we afford to spend so much time playing a game?  Well, in her case, she has the time because she is not in service to any institution outside our family.  In my case, I have worked hard to get out ahead enough to buy myself the time to play the game by releasing a new book that is out making money and freeing up my personal time, so in that way, I have afforded myself the ability to give my wife more of my time which is all she really wanted for Christmas.  The look on her face is as authentic as it gets and I offer the rare look behind the curtain of my family so that others can see the reality behind the rhetoric that often surrounds me.

Many of my readers and friends here have wanted to see pictures of my new grandson, and they are curious as to what daily life is like within my family.  We are a close family because my wife has dedicated her life to making it so, and she deserves a lot of credit for that.  It can be seen clearly in videos like the one shown above.   The tickets she received at the beginning of the clip were symbolic of the kind of vacation that we have been experiencing for the last 20 days.    It took her a long time to put all the elements together to figure out what was happening, but once she did, she was extremely happy, which earned for me the worth of the whole enterprise.  She has taken a lot of flack for being a full-time housewife over the years, and she has patiently put up with most of the slander that has been thrown her way which sometimes gets compounded when money is tight.  We know that most families cannot do as we have done, because these days so many women are embedded in the economy that if they all pulled out to become full-time mothers our national unemployment rate would jump up to 30 to 40% instantly.  Many women also would be lost as to their roles as central family beacons, because there is a lot of responsibility in that job, and they have been taught not to take that responsibility.  When things go bad, there is nobody but one person to point at and blame.  If a child goes bad, the mother often will blame herself, and many women hide from this responsibility behind their careers, and that will not change over night.    But most women deep down inside know that no matter how much money they earn, it cannot replace the impact of their love and attention for their families.  Kids who have such busy mothers are easy to spot in a crowd, and these days most of our society is functioning from a hunger for their mother’s attention that they never received as children.  The public schools are not adequate replacements, and mothers who make such decisions of putting career in front of motherhood are fools.

Progressives have attempted to change human behavior and they have failed.  Anyone who defends those failures is an idiot, and I know a lot of them.  Some people are so far into building their lives around that idioticrity that they will lash out at people like me by calling me a sexist, and calling my clothing “wife beater” attire as they did in my video A Whip Trick to Save America where I wore an Under Armor muscle shirt that was labeled by my feminist political critics in such a fashion.  Those people are wrong, and have built their entire lives around being wrong.  Many of the names progressive women have called my sweet wife over the years, and myself really reflect their personal feelings of guilt.  I know it, she knows it, and they know it.  My kids have witnessed it, everyone knows what the motives are behind the actions, and after all of that I continue to believe more and more, that a child needs a mother to be ever-present, and a family needs a string of such women to be strong otherwise failure is assured and the family structure will break down in the absence of such personalities.

The sacrifice to have a strong family by allowing the women of that family to serve no entity but their families is that money is harder to come by.  But it’s worth it for those few times when enough money is made that quality time with loved ones becomes possible.  In the case of the Christmas computer gifts it is not the machinery or hardware, it’s the time that playing the game will giver her with me, her children, her nieces and nephews, sisters and even parents that are scattered all over the Earth.  The gift she received was time with the people she cares about, and that is the a gift that extends beyond conventional value, and is the reason for her delight on that memorable Christmas morning that had been a long time and coming—which she waited patiently to see.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

‘Les Misérables’ and ‘Star Wars’: A trip to the book store to buy ‘Scoundrels’

Before I get into a lengthy diatribe of translating the good experience of taking my grandson to his first book store as a 4 month old lad, I must comment on the video below featuring a middle-aged couple being hounded by their grown children after seeing the new movie release of Les Misérables featuring Hugh Jackman, Russell Crow and Anne Hathaway in a fantastic rendition of the popular play and book.  The couple is noticeably emotional as they left the theater and were in the car on the way home.  The sons of the couple thought the sight of their parents emotional state worth capturing for the YouTube archives.  Les Misérables (usually pron.: /leɪ ˌmɪzəˈrɑːb/; French pronunciation: ​[le mizeʁabl(ə)]) is a French historical novel by Victor Hugo, first published in 1862, that is widely considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century. In the English-speaking world the novel is usually referred to by its original French title, which can be translated from the French as The Miserable, The Wretched, The Miserable Ones, The Poor Ones, The Wretched Poor, or The Victims. Beginning in 1815 and culminating in the 1832 June Rebellion in Paris, the novel follows the lives and interactions of several characters, focusing on the struggles of ex-convict Jean Valjean and his experience of redemption.[1]

 

I don’t have the same experience with Les Misérables as the couple above.  For me, the French Revolution was a failure, and the aftermath led them to become a country continuously conquered by the Germans thereafter.  But, in American society, much of the love of Paris, Mardi Gras festivals, and even the roots for socialism among the so-called educated and cultured East Coast residents can be traced back to the popular play and their love of it.  For me, the characters in Les Misérables do not have enough Übermensch in them, which is all that I find worthy in works of art these days.  But I was thinking of that poor couple as my wife and I took our grandson to our weekly outing to the bookstore to stock up on more books for the week.  Before our shopping spree however we went to Chili’s as I watched the preview show for the BCS Title game between Notre Dame and Alabama on ESPN.  As I looked around the bar, everyone’s eyes were fixated on the same information being broadcast from the flat screen televisions all around the restaurant.  As we ate, I discussed all these elements with my wife and grandson, we spoke about the BCS game, Brian Kelly in leaving the University of Cincinnati to bring Notre Dame to dominance in just two years, the consistency of the Alabama program,  and why the poor couple coming home from the Les Misérables movie were so sad.  I explained to my grandson that many adults have turned off their minds.  Football, even though I enjoy the drama of the game is an accepted entertainment that occupies the neural development of the brain’s core processes and serves as a great distraction from the helpless, out-of-control nature many people feel in their lives.  Many adults have turned their minds off to many forms of mythology unless the orthodox society has determined that something has great sophisticated merit over other forms.  In other words, most adults wish to believe that they have arrived in their advanced age at a place of mental superiority over children like my grandson.

My grandson looked at me gurgling milk bubbles from his mouth as I spoke for nearly a half hour without pause.  I’m not sure how much he understood, but he looked at me and didn’t interrupt as my wife fed him his bottle.   I was feeling relaxed as we are on the third week of our unconventional vacation in the Star Wars galaxy of The Old Republic video game, and my wife and I have been having a blast.  Unlike Les Misérables or sports of any kind, the philosophy of Star Wars deals often with topics of the  Übermensch so more and more I turn to it for the level of thinking I enjoy indulging in, and two solid weeks of gaming on the new MMO The Old Republic with my wife and kids solving various political problems as Jedi Knights on the worlds of Nar Shaddaa, Coruscant and the shattered world of the once thriving Taris, I am at the closest place to complete bliss that I think is possible, and I suddenly felt very sorry for my adult contemporaries who only had the BCS Title game to look forward to, or a screening of Les Misérables.  To me, those are passive—or dead mythologies.  But Star Wars has always been a vast and creative mythology.  The concepts set in the mind a motion that unifies complex ideas under the powerful process of mythology and in human history, there is nothing like Star Wars, and sadly parents like the couple crying over Les Misérables deny themselves the same experience with Star Wars because they mistakenly believe that Star Wars is for kids alone.  It’s not.  For the adults who can share those mythologies with their children—and in our case—grandchildren, Star Wars is the building blocks to the next great philosophic movement.

The start of this new philosophic/religious awaking is just beginning.  Star Wars the Clone Wars just had their 100th episode aired on the Cartoon Network during the second Saturday of January 2013 and Kathy Kennedy is moving the production of the new movie trilogy into the casting stage.  The servers are thumping for the MMO game that my wife and I were eager to get back to after our dinner and trip to the book store—so BioWare has been successful in bringing new interest to the game which I think is very valuable.  But the reason for our outing was not to buy a new video game, see a movie, or even to eat out with our grandson.  The purpose of our journey to the book store was to buy the new Star Wars book called Scoundrels which just came out on January 1st and is a book that my wife has salivated over for nearly 6 months.  So after dinner we headed over to our favorite bookstore and suffered through the numerous people who wished to stop our progress and gaze at our grandson who was wide awake and smiling.  I was happy to show him such a place of freedom—a book store.  For me personally, there is no place better on Earth.  I love the smell of them.  I like the people in them.   And I treasure the vast vaults of knowledge contained in them.  So long as there is a free press, tyranny of any kind can never take full hold in any culture.  Bookstores are the backbone to freedom and this was my grandson’s first experience in one–his first of millions—I will make sure of it.

For me, when I was only 9 or 10 years older than my grandson is now, I would spend all of my time away from home in two places, the arcade and the book store.  When I ran out of money in the video arcade, I would then go to the book store and read through the titles for hours and hours never getting bored.  In fact, I read the Egyptian Book of the Dead complete with hieroglyphic translations during these visits before I was able to purchase my own copy many years later once I started working at age 13.  Back then, Star Wars as a mythology only centered on the original trilogies and had three novels out, the novelization of A New Hope (the first Star Wars film) a novel called A Splinter in the Mind’s Eye, and a book called Han Solo At Star’s End.  Now, there are hundreds of novels, and they take up an entire section of the book store.  In fact, there is no other section in any book store that is larger than most of the sections dedicated to Star Wars books.  And I am proud to say that my wife and I possess every single Star Wars novel or junior book ever written and have them in our personal library.  She has read them all, I have read about 2/3rds of them.

The book we came to get, Scoundrels was sold out in just two days.  The book features Han Solo in a Timothy Zhan story taking place immediately after A New Hope.   My wife really wanted to read this one, because it takes Solo back to the time of his late 30’s.  In the books that will lead up to the new films being produced by Lucasfilm and Disney where Harrison Ford will reprise his role and introduce Han Solo’s glorious daughter Jaina to the silver screen, Solo is well into his 70’s—so he’s been around a long time. (No Lucasfilm has not confirmed that Jaina will be in the new film.  I just know it to be the case—my own deductive reasoning.)  Well, apparently we weren’t the only ones wanting to buy Scoundrels.  The book store employee who was very excited to talk about the Star Wars books he’s been reading with us, called around town to find a store that had the new book.  While we waited, a young man was in the Star Wars section buying up four paperbacks while his girlfriend waited patiently.  I was impressed to see his ambition as he declared to me that he “loved Star Wars.”  I saw on his face a more mature and controlled emotion than the one shown by the distraught  Les Misérables viewers.  With that being said, I noticed that the book store had more Star Wars books than usual and it was explained to me that a combination of the BioWare game The Old Republic, The Cartoon Network television show The Clone Wars, and the announcement of a new Star Wars trilogy coming to theaters in 2015 along with a very aggressive publishing effort pumping out books like Scoundrels every couple of months–nothing is selling hotter than Star Wars these days.

I enjoyed the passion of the young man in the Star Wars section and the book store worker.  I saw on their faces an enthusiasm that was much different from the patrons at the Chili’s bar watching the BCS pregame statistics.  That football game will come and go and be forgotten within months.  Star Wars will be remembered and built upon by the fans who read the books in a mythology that takes place over 37,000 years of interconnected story that spans thousands of characters arcs.  Nothing against   Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables but as a literary endeavor alone, Star Wars is the greatest single work of literature ever created—and it’s not just for kids.  Adults could learn a lot.

We traveled across town and picked up the book that was being held at the counter for us.  Barnes and Noble at The Streets of West Chester had a copy left and my wife erupted into delight when she put her hands on the meaty hard cover book.  “It will be so nice to read a story where Han and Chewie are together again”  There was a love on her face that was much more sophisticated and honest than the poor people who were broken up over the ending of Les Misérables.  There is a truth in Star Wars that is eluding the rest of our 21st century society and only Lucasfilm has really managed to put their finger on it fully.   I have been visiting book stores for  nearly 35 years and this was the first time it really hit me that a wave of new philosophy is about to impact the human race with a freshness that modern mankind has never experienced.  And it happened during my grandson’s first visit to a book store to get a Star Wars novel.

If there is one thing that I have learned on my 3 week vacation in the Star Wars galaxy it is that there is a New Hope manifesting in reality.  It is percolating subtly through art, politics, and philosophy through the work of children’s stories that contain within them the answers we are all seeking.  If Les Misérables is about the harsh conditions and sympathies toward revolution and oppression, Star Wars is about the hope of crushing that oppression with a balanced life of kindness defended with passion and aggression—a very different message than the one provided by the great Victor Hugo novel which Ayn Rand loved so much.

http://exaltedmoments.blogspot.com/2009/06/ayn-rand-on-victor-hugo.html

But Star Wars is the next artistic step in mankind’s long quest for truth, justice, religious purpose, and the endless desire to discover what’s over the next horizon.  At least, that’s what I told my grandson, and judging by is facial expressions—he was listening intently, even if he has not yet constructed the ability to express himself with anything more than a smile.

If  you’d like, visit me while I take a personal vacation, not in some faraway place, but on Star Wars: The Old Republic.  CLICK HERE TO SEE MORE.

Rich Hoffman

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Letters of Hatred: A school bus crashes into a Fairfield home

As further proof of left winged hypocrisy that feels it has a right to preach their warped morality to the rest of us let me share with the class a correspondence I have had with William Schmidt over the last couple of days.  Schmidt is one of those types who believe that public education is the center point of our culture whereas I differ from him in believing it is the parent.  He believes in centralized collective connectivity whereas I believe in disconnected self-reliance and respect of personal sovereignty.  Just a few days before Christmas he felt empowered by the Sandy Hook massacre to write me because of the 6 educators who were killed protecting their students as if those acts of valor justified the many tragedies that are going on in public education otherwise.  I’m sure this guy has a wife and kids that love him, so I doubt he’s the epitome of evil, but just a guy with the wrong point of view.  Needless to say before the Holidays as family events and fun festivities are most on my mind, I really didn’t want to be reminded of the kind of people who have run our nation to the edge of the fiscal cliff.  His comments drew my mind away from what I’d rather think about, which just opened up all the raw anger I have for advocates of Keynesian economics.  He felt further that he had some kind of right to analyze my political strategy and other attributes to my personality—so I present the first parts of our conversation for study and comment.

On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 12:08 AM, <teenorm@aol.com> wrote:

Rich,

It is interesting that you acknowledged that Stephan Round left his teaching job for reasons you seemed to agree with, but only identified 6 other educators from Connecticut who also left their positions at the hands of a home-schooled individual as being unarmed progressive advocates.  What you advocate might be easier to swallow if you had a heart.  You slipped up badly last March and you are trying to reestablish yourself by being more bizarre.  No one is going to believe that the teachers attempting to protect those children at Sandy Hook were simply greedy, communistic, radical, and self-serving.  Stephan Round may have done something bold, but to recognize it while belittling those that gave their lives is certainly not an American value and it shows your flaws as an advocate for anything.

William Schmidt

—–Original Message—–
From: Rich Hoffman
To: teenorm <teenorm@aol.com>
Sent: Fri, Dec 21, 2012 6:18 am
Subject: Re:

Sorry dude, but you are not qualified to measure the worth of my heart,
or my strategy.  But thanks for writing.

Merry Christmas,

Rich

On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 6:51 PM, <teenorm@aol.com> wrote:

Hey buddy,  let’s see if maybe I can take a measure of your heart.

When you saw the picture from the site below

http://www.wdtn.com/dpp/news/ohio/fairfield-school-bus-slams-into-house#.UNT0o2__pfQ

didn’t your heart sort of say to you, I hope its Arnie’s house and I hope a teacher union member was driving.

William

While Schmidt’s first message might be considered well-thought, it can be seen how quickly it degraded into one that advocated violence.  My response to him I thought was very polite—I even gave him a way out to save face by wishing him a Merry Christmas.  Instead, he chose to respond with his hope that the bus that crashed through a Fairfield home was driven by a member of the teacher’s union trying to run over Arnie Engle who fights the levy attempts in Fairfield.  So while Schmidt felt entitled to lecture me on how I messed up in March of 2012 by calling my political rivals “fat assed prostitutes who will do anything for money” (more or less) he believes that he can wish for the injury of a tax resister like Arnie Engle in Fairfield by hoping that he was run over by a school bus—being driven by a member of the teacher’s union.  It is exactly this kind of thinking that caused people to camp outside a Kroger store in my community and attempt to publicly smear my name because they couldn’t win against me in a public debate.  CLICK HERE to hear me tell the story in a speech I gave to the Oxford Tea Party.  I will never forget that event or forgive it as long as I live.  It pissed me off that much, because of the intent behind the behavior.

For those like Schmidt who read here and want to know what I’m up to, or what I’m thinking, let me answer them all in one article, rather than writing a bunch of individual emails.  I have watched how Arnie Engle, and many other school board members who have tried to fight to keep taxes lower have been treated by the education establishment.  Educrats are radicalized monsters of selfishness and I have no sympathy for them, nor do I want to share my space with them. I see them as social parasites and I don’t want them around America’s children.  In fact, I don’t want people who think like William Schmidt to be anywhere near children.  He can think whatever he wants, but people like him should not have access to tax money to live off of while they teach American youth their warped progressive viewpoints.

After Lakota refused to ask the teachers union for a 5% wage reduction in February of 2012  members of my No Lakota Levy group wanted me to handle the public relations for their Yes to Lakota Kids group to prove to the community that they weren’t bad people for voting down the tax increases. I didn’t think they should feel they had to defend any kind of position.  In fact I told them they should be willing to tell their critics to stick their opinions up their asses, which is what I said in private.  In public I helped them, but I had decided that I wanted to go into a different direction from what they were doing.  In fact, I have most of my interviews on my blog here at the OW, but the one I gave to Mark Amazon on 700 WLW about the $10,000 Yes to Lakota Kids donated to Lakota is one I never posted, because while the thought was nice, I felt insincere participating.  I let my friends at No Lakota Levy and Michael Clark at the Enquirer steer my support to a more community based position.  I haven’t talked about this stuff before but since it’s the end of the year and is now on my mind, it’s worth analysis.  I was driving for a political checkmate strategically in February while people like Clark and some of my No Lakota Levy friends were interested in community hand holding with people like Schmidt—which I had no interest in.  So I offered my support publicly out of loyalty to the Enquirer and my levy fighting friends but it wasn’t the way I wanted to play the game.

After attending a meeting where Lakota cut even more teachers without asking the union for a 5% cut, I gave my last interview to Channel 19 as a traditional member of No Lakota Levy.  Lakota was positioning themselves for a fourth levy attempt and I was not going to allow myself to be handcuffed by The Enquirer, by my friends, or even WLW whom I had a good relationship with but seemed eager to force peace between myself and the radicals in education.  While all this was going on, the Kroger Survey that I referred to was taking place and the reports of how my name was being smeared publicly was coming back to me. So I did what I needed to do, and that was to change my strategy.  Since the politics was not working—because the school refused to acknowledge the No Lakota Levy victories at the ballot box, I decided that I would turn up the heat in the future and that meant not playing as nicely as we had before—so I desired to no longer be a spokesman for the group.  Playing fairly was not getting the job done, so more extreme measures were necessary.

My 2013 strategy will not need the traditional media outlets.  I have done a lot of that, and Lakota ignored the facts, so uttering the same debate a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth time is pointless.  Instead I am free to conduct my observations about public education without worrying about holding back my opinion in the name of community peace, which I felt I had to do when representing the other members of No Lakota Levy.  People Like William Schmidt assume mistakenly that I desire to play politics by the rules that people like him control—the left leaning progressives who say one thing, but do another as he stated in his email to me preaching the merit of the Sandy Hook teachers while wishing for the harm of Arnie Engle when a school bus ran into a house in Fairfield.  I want people who think like Schmidt out of education completely so my new strategy won’t be to argue finance, curriculum, or cost saving alternatives.  No Lakota Levy was attempting to help Lakota manage its finances while still offering the public the services they had gotten used to.  I no longer support such endeavors and haven’t since the last election failed to change the behavior at the school.

I support School Choice and the complete eradication of the teacher’s union.  I do not want any of my money to go to the OEA or any other large labor union embedded in the public sector like a parasitic flea on a dogs rear end and I have also decided that I don’t want to offer a free education to the kind of people who stood outside a Kroger store and smeared my name so their snot nosed kids can learn to be social vermin off my dime. (CLICK HERE TO SEE WHAT THEY SAID)  I don’t care about the sports that come out of a local school, and I don’t care if the school in my neighborhood has state rankings or not, I want them all privatized and funded fully by the parents who send their kids to those schools.  I think public education is inferior to other kinds of education and I don’t want to pay for it.  I don’t want to pay for more and more generations of young people who don’t appreciate the free baby sitting the community provides for parents who think like William Schmidt and believes they have a right to lecture me on morality.

So I won’t be supporting traditional education models in the future.  I will encourage people I know to run for school board seats to solve the problem in the short-run, but in the long, I want public education changed forever.  Doing things they way I did them before with reasonable debate in the newspapers and on the radio simply won’t get the job done.  It obviously did not work before, so doing the same thing in the future would be foolish, and a waste of time.  I have seen personally what the education system has done to good people like Arnie Engle, and I won’t be going down that path.  But I can assure all those who did not listen when I was reasonable—who elected to make it personal in February of 2012—you have only yourselves to blame.  Going forward you will wish you had listened.  You will wish that you took my hand when I offered it.  You will wish that you hadn’t been a smart-ass and tried to move me with thuggish resonance, and you will wish you offered the 5% reduction in wages instead of facing what is coming.  But more than anything you will wish that I was still attached to my friends at No Lakota Levy—because when I was, I held back a lot because I didn’t want to embarrass them publicly.  So no William Schmidt, I did not “slip up badly” in March.  I simply had enough of playing Mr. Nice Guy.  I had enough of the speeches, the attempts to deal reasonably with radicals, and I wanted the freedom to call them what I saw them as—and I did.  Unlike other people I know who allow the political left to pick them apart with progressive hypocrisy, I play by different rules and I meant it when I said in the Enquirer that I’m an “eye for a head kind of guy.”  The levy radicals shouldn’t have tried to poke me in the eye—because the score is not yet settled, and I can’t settle that score being a nice guy spokesman for No Lakota Levy.

It is my conclusion that public education is broken beyond repair and all the employees in it should be fired and replaced with a new system that is driven by competition.  So I have no more patience for the debate, or interest in what the other side thinks.

See my speech at the Oxford Tea Party for more info:  CLICK HERE

Rich Hoffman

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

  

The Joys of Christmas: What to put under the tree this year?

I do love Christmas for all the reasons that tradition holds.  I suspect that many people are lost to those reasons as culturally society has failed them.  I noticed the longing gaze in the eye of a bank teller the other day when I took out the money to buy my wife’s Christmas present. I could see that she was married, and wished that somebody went to the trouble that I was for my spouse to see that she had a good Christmas.  I revealed my plans to the young lady because of the amount of money that I was taking out in cash, which most people wouldn’t feel comfortable carrying around with them.  I explained that this was the only way I could keep the present a secret from my wife with the hope of lasting till Christmas Day.

She let out several long gasps as she counted the money in stacks of hundred-dollar bills and I could tell that she wished for the same kind of cloak and dagger type maneuvers from her own spouse.  I told her to be patient, that if she could stay married for a quarter of a century like my wife and I have, that such a thing would be possible in her own future.  She smiled, at that and seemed to perk up as she lost track of her count and had to start all over again.

For what Christmas means to me, CLICK HERE and learn what my favorite Christmas song is and why.  I don’t think I will ever tire of Christmas morning, and waking up to unleash the many devious plots that I had been pondering for months toward all the people in my family that were carefully concealed acts of espionage designed to make them happy.  I truly enjoy those magical mornings of cold winter delight as for just a moment the world takes a deep breath and enjoys the company of one another.  And I truly love surprising people, especially my wife, since she is so incredibly hard to catch off guard.

In all our years of marriage, there have only been a handful of times that I have been able to “catch” her with a surprise of any worth.  Some years it is a treasured book that is hard to get, some years it is a gift that she would never buy for herself.  Of recent years, I was able to give her a slick monokini from Victoria Secret that she could wear in the streets of Key West and Cancun without being too over-the-top, and not look like a 17 year-old-girl.  Hard to do with her, and not cheap, since she is extremely picky—extremely.   That was over four years ago, and I haven’t been able to get her quite that good since—until this year.

Another year, my oldest daughter caught me off-guard with a book called Way of the Fighter, which I had been looking for over 20 years.  (CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW)  It’s a rare out-of-print book that costs over $100 dollars from used book venders.  During one of my trips to Los Angeles as I had time to kill from my business there, I spent entire days at the large used book stores on Brand Boulevard looking for a copy of that book from some deceased celebrity’s estate where the kids sold off all the things they thought didn’t have value.  But to no avail.  Somehow, my daughter had tracked down a copy of that book and gave it to me on Christmas, which to date is one of the greatest gifts I have ever received during all my many Christmases over the years.

But the gist of the gifts have not always been about the money, or how much they cost, it is the value of the thoughts behind them, the scheming all in the name of love that goes on in behalf of coaxing just a bit of joy out of a loved one for just a moment.  It is the selfish joy of seeing someone you care about open a gift that you carefully prepared, and plotted to give under the cloak of secrecy for the sustained joy of the gift’s intended recipient.

I suspect Christmas at my house this year will be one of the good ones, and I worked hard to position it that way, and the payday is on the morning of December 25th—and I frankly can’t wait.  But as we wait for that fateful day, if there is a freedom fighter in your family, or a Tea Party patriot, a young NASCAR fan, a hopeless romantic, an avid reader, or just a rebellious renegade then might I suggest you give them for Christmas my book, Tail of the Dragon.  Aside from a last-minute plug for the book, it is a story that will continue giving well into 2013, and they will love you for it.  So if you order one now from the links below, the book should arrive well before shipping companies close down for Christmas, with Saturday the 22nd being the last day.  Amazon.com has been sold out for most of December, but my publisher just sent them a heap of books to fill the need.  And I’m pretty sure that Barnes and Noble has been able to keep up their stock.  So this is just a friendly reminder for the last of those gifts you wish to give that special someone who are truly unique, there is still a chance to put Tail of the Dragon under the tree before Christmas.

For my readers here, I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.  No matter how dark and dreary things appear at times, it is always the human qualities that are best expressed on Christmas morning that ensure that the human race will always persevere over tyranny and chaos to find joy on a new day as the best of what’s in all of us come out on that wonderful—joyous day of December 25th each and every year.

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TheNovelRich Hoffman

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

  

David P. Little Protests at Boehner’s Office: Lap dog reporters get their bellies scratched

I always imagined that activist David P. Little from Progress Ohio who came after me personally a couple of years ago, looked a lot like Jeffery Stec who is currently parading all over the Lakota School District with Karen Mantia attempting to cushion the blow of their next tax increase attempt using their “Community Conversations” campaign.  Jeffery is a younger guy who worked on the streetcar issue in downtown Cincinnati—one of those progressive utopian projects designed by Agenda 21 to be a people mover once high taxes and excessive regulation nudge people back into the cities where authorities can have more control over populations and their behavior.  No, David P. Little is not what I imagined once I saw recent pictures of him.  2 years ago Darryl Parks and I exposed the progressive activist on 700 WLW after Little directly attacked my character calling me a “wealthy businessman” (sound familiar) among other things for my opposition to the Lakota School Levy.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW THAT EPISODE. 

The videos below are from Progress Ohio so it can be seen what kind of people are involved in that organization.

After the incident I communicated with Little through email, as I was just a bit enraged over the incident.  Up to that point I hadn’t yet become the target of leftist progressive radicals, so they really didn’t know what to make of me in a conflict.  I didn’t imagine that Little was just another “flower child” from the sun-baked 60’s generation, which is what he has turned out to be.  (CLICK HERE TO SEE HIM.)  I thought he was a young guy like Stec trying to make a name for himself with progressive politics.  In that story, Little representing Progress Ohio did a “hit” piece on me that Michael Clark from the Cincinnati Enquirer tipped me off to, and I was thankful that he did.  Back then, Clark and I got along fine, and fairly and he gave me the heads up to what Little was doing against me.  Sadly, just a few years later when a similar “hit” piece was being assembled against me after the third levy defeat, Clark played the other side of the fence as many people warned me he would, so it wasn’t a big surprise, just a disappointment in such predictable human behavior.    CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.  However over the David Little incident, Clark came through which allowed me to answer the story right out of the gate. 

Well, David Little has been back in West Chester politics as he was recently heading up a protest outside of John Boehner’s office urging the Speaker of the House to cut the industrial military complex that is “nation building” throughout the world in lieu of the upcoming “fiscal cliff.”  Little at the protest argued that there would be more money for things like education, and public employees if the military industry in America were diminished to nothing and all the evil contractors would perish into joblessness.  Here is the link to the Pulse Journal article from the reporter covering the story.

http://www.pulsejournal.com/news/news/group-rallies-outside-boehners-local-office/nTPZ3/

I don’t blame the Pulse Journal for not doing proper research into who David Little was.  When Little came after me way back then that particular reporter was probably drawing in coloring books in grade school, as the reporter turn-over rate at the Pulse Journal is excessively high, and their editorial staff has been looking for lapdogs to act as public relations spokesman for Lakota and other community advocate groups.  So the young reporter wouldn’t know the history of Little and his involvement in Lakota, or myself over the years.

Back when I first encountered Little I only argued that costs needed to be brought down in public education.  Since then I have learned what groups like Progess Ohio and public education really have in mind for America, and I have been very vocal about it, which is why many of the reporters who used to speak to me on a regular basis no longer do, because everyone’s comfort level has been smashed when dealing with the actual facts of these stories.   The Pulse Journal as a paper would never reveal how radical Progress Ohio is or their progressive philosophy of undermining The United States with mush minded ideas and pixy dust politics.  But I have went on record calling Little and the groups he fronts for what I think of them, which of course leads to tension—which is my right to do since it was they who drew blood first.

It was cute to see 15 miscreants show up at Boehner’s office with David Little as the spokesman and argue for the dismantling of the military complex in America to pay for a debt that progressive politicians have intentionally driven up to cause the current financial crises in the first place.  The debt is being driven by the old Cloward and Piven strategy of economic collapse to force “change” which is what this whole fiscal cliff idea really comes down to.  The economic perils are part of an attack offensive driven by progressive politics and it is good to see that David Little is at the forefront of the movement.

It is sad that The Enquirer and the Pulse Journal did not report the activity of David Little for what it was, but subtly attempted to pile on the opposition against Boehner as the fiscal cliff nears with the opinion of a fossilized flower child and his progressive philosophy of destruction.   But in these days of social media and changing roles, it is the citizen journalists who are tasked with the traditional roles of watchdog observation, as the current crop of reporters are in league with the masters of destruction implementing a plot of terror that is quietly lethal all because such positions are convenient.

Rich Hoffman

www.tailofthedragonbook.com