Tag: Rich Hoffman

Ron Howard Directing the New Han Solo Film: Why hating Donald Trump is toxic for people in the entertainment industry

There is no way I couldn’t do it because it was only the biggest news story of the week—bigger than Donald Trump’s latest speech, bigger than the latest terrorist threat in Europe—it was so big that it actually led the headlines for three solid days worldwide.  The new Han Solo Star Wars movie production fired its two directors—whom I liked—Phil Lord and Christopher Miller with just three weeks left on the schedule and a summer of re-shoots still needing completion.  Obviously, I have designated myself as a Star Wars fan and out of all the characters in that fantasy sci-fi series Han Solo is my absolutely favorite character.  So even though there are thousands of other topics I might otherwise discuss—I must cover this issue by default of its cultural importance—because as I’ve said many times, Star Wars is not just a movie.  For many people it is a nearly religious event with tremendous cultural ramifications.  And yes, this was big news to a lot of people—and to the film industry as a whole.  My first inclination was optimism for reasons that I’ll describe because it tells me that Kathy Kennedy has her arms around these Star Wars movies—she understands what needs to be done and she isn’t afraid to do it—and I respect that.  Her pick for the next director couldn’t have been better—Ron Howard fresh off the Genius National Geographic drama about Albert Einstein.

I understand now that it was the kid playing the young Han Solo who actually started the process, Alden Ehrenreich.  He apparently was concerned that the directors known for their comedy in films like 21 Jump Street were not taking the picture to a place it needed to go and he spoke to people about it.  His instincts were correct, Han Solo is serious business even though there is comedy that surrounds a character like that—it’s a very fine line.  After Ehrenreich stated his concerns the word got back to Kathy Kennedy who took a look at the dailies and the film just wasn’t working.  It’s not necessarily the fault of Lord and Miller, but if they weren’t getting that fine line—then they needed to be fired.

Additionally, and this is something I don’t think any of them would admit, I noticed that both Miller and Lord were openly protesting Donald Trump and were members of this new Hollywood “resistance” which happens to be the same name of the group that works against the Empire in the new Star Wars films—and this was making Disney and Kathy Kennedy nervous.  The Han Solo film went into production in February of this year and I just happened to be in London at the same time so I was seeing news that wasn’t so available in the United States and I was very concerned that these new Star Wars directors were so openly against Trump and were fully supporting demonstrations in the streets of London.  There is no question that some of that radicalism was finding its way into the new Star Wars movie—where it clearly didn’t belong.  By pissing off half the country in America with political activism in a Star Wars film it would certainly take a hit at the box office and the franchise led by Kennedy these days can’t afford something like that, directly or indirectly.  It was so bad that I actually Tweeted the kids to knock it off—they needed to keep their eyes on the big picture.

Just this week Johnny Depp effectively ended his career when he stated that he thought that a modern actor should assassinate Donald Trump—he was speaking to a group in England where that kind of talk is quite popular these days and he forgot really how far his statements might go—and once it hit the American media it was too late for him.  Depp’s latest Pirates of the Caribbean film had done decent business and if he had kept his mouth shut, he might have recovered as an actor.  His recent divorce and difficulties on the set of Dead Men Tell No Tales have flagged him as a has been that can’t deliver at the box office.  His money was over extended and he really needed to just ride the wave of Pirates and actually hope for another one to pull him out of this slump. But now—he’s toxic. Like it or not, Trump is president and many people are having a positive experience because of it—and they don’t want to hear a bunch of spoiled brat actors and directors taking shots at their president in movies they pay to see. It’s just not good business.  I think Johnny Depp—as much as I like him as an actor—just killed his career forever.  He’ll never recover. He literally just went from riches to rags—because with his financial problems he needed to stay on top to get large pay checks and he just killed that opportunity.

Although I was critical of the Genius show on the National Geographic Channel, Ron Howard did a great job as he always does directing it.  He is one of the top filmmakers in the world clearly functioning from a different place—and when it was announced that Lucasfilm had hired him to replace Lord and Miller I was very happy about it.  Ron Howard knew how to keep the modern politics out of his projects just like many older directors could. For instance, I never knew whether or not George Lucas or Steven Spielberg were conservatives or liberals in the 80s.  When Ronald Reagan invited them to the White House they went and took pictures and they certainly didn’t protest in politics.  If Return of the Jedi had references to the Vietnam War in it sympathetic to the Vietnamese—I couldn’t tell by watching the product.

I was quite shocked to find in the 90s that Spielberg and Lucas gave money to the Clintons and were becoming more active within the Democratic Party—and as much as I liked them—I thought differently about them since then.  No longer did I rush out and see their movies because they had shown themselves to be against conservative positions—and honestly they never recovered their former positions culturally because of it.  However, Ron Howard has never lost that and is the closest thing we have in Hollywood to a good traditional director and actor who established his roots on the Andy Griffin Show.  He knows how to walk that fine line so that people can enjoy a project of his without thinking about the modern politics of the moment—because ten to twenty years from now—you still want the film to be relevant.

For this Han Solo movie to have the kind of appeal that Disney needs out of it they really need to pull off something special and it’s a credit to Kathy Kennedy that she took action before it was too late.  Ron Howard will know what to do and I’m relieved for it.  The world is changing and that radicalism that Hollywood has embraced cannot find its way into something that needs to stay relevant well into the future.  By the time this Han Solo movie is released in May of 2018 we will be living in a different world–largely shaped by Donald Trump’s presidency—and a lot of people will be supportive of him.  They don’t want to see a movie made by people who openly hate him and have filled their Twitter pages with disparaging Trump remarks.  They’ll want to go to the darkened theater and enjoy a new Star Wars movie without politics trying to shape their opinions—and Ron Howard knows how to do that.  After all, it wasn’t Howard’s fault that I liked Albert Einstein less after his Genius series.  It was to Howard’s credit that I was able to get to know Einstein much better than ever before.  As an artist he just presented the facts—he didn’t tell me how to feel—and that is the difference between a great director and people who are just average.  That is why hiring Howard to direct the Han Solo movie will prove to be so brilliant—and I’m glad the production had the courage to do it—before it was too late.

Rich Hoffman

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Donald Trump Making Looney Toons out of Everyone Else: Being poor is a choice in America

At this point it’s obvious, the Democrats are like the Looney Toons characters of Yosemite Sam and Wile E. Coyote compared to Donald Trump who is to them a combination of Bugs Bunny and Road Runner all rolled up into one terrifyingly president of the United States. Nobody out-thinks the “Trump” I suppose is the way the situation should be phrased.  Trump is playing chess while everyone else is playing some child’s game in the media and within the Beltway. Trump has totally turned upside down even the most terrifying Deep State insurgents and made them look stupid just five months into his presidency—and I’m so glad to see it.  I hoped this would happen, but Trump is even more successful than even my wildest imagination could articulate and I’m loving it.  Yet when Trump made a small remark about the kind of people he had in his administration who were handling the economy—for which the political left has been critical because Trump’s people are very wealthy—Trump said to an Iowa rally audience that he wanted rich people instead of poor people managing economic affairs and this was somehow controversial.  When I heard it I didn’t think anything about it until I saw the reaction of the media the next day, and I have to say I was shocked that they were so shocked.

In covering this episode of leftist babble Sean Hannity made a good point, he said on his Fox News show that out of all the jobs he had ever done in his life from busboy to radio station on air talent—he never worked for a poor person. As I thought about that it was obviously a correct statement.  I reflected on my own colorful past of work experience and it was true, I never did work for a poor person.  I can think of one guy who did struggle to pay for his monthly bills but that wasn’t because he didn’t have access to financial resources—it was because he was reckless with his money.  After all he had just spent $23,0000 dollars on a stripper in Newport, Kentucky—so that did soak up some of his expendable cash during that time period.  But nobody was ever poor who signed a pay check to me—and there’s a reason for that.  Job creators are those who have financial resources beyond what they can handle themselves to manage—they have access to productivity which places them in a category of understanding that is beyond the concepts of a poor person.

As the poor are described Biblically, as people with limited resources who were not part of the political structure of their times, I can understand the nobility of being free and clear spiritually to live life simply and close to God. But the term is no longer relevant today with the invention of the United States of America.  In America, you can be religious and wealthy and there is nothing wrong with it.  It’s not like you have to live in sin to appease the Roman Empire or the Pharisees to hold wealth.  America made it so that any person who wanted to work hard regardless of their social stature could become wealthy and that is essentially what is wrong with liberals today—they don’t understand that.  They still want to apply merit to the poor because like most churches, it holds people’s minds to socialism and communism.  Poor people to the socialist is a badge of honor.  To an American conservative who loves their guns and their Bible—they are just lazy pot smoking losers.

There is no reason to be poor in America. There is always a job that needs to be done in a productive society and if you want to hold three or four jobs to climb out of a financial hole, you can do that.  I know I have.  I also know that Sean Hannity has.  The main reason I enjoy listening to Sean Hannity is because he has a similar background experience as I do.  I have nothing in common with news commentators who get up and go to work around 9 am and are pretty much done for the day by 3 pm.  I get up at 5 am every day and I go to bet around 11:30 pm and I work pretty much all day on and off.  Even in my leisure I’m still working on something—and that’s how it’s been for me for four decades now.  Sean Hannity always worked hard, and so does Donald Trump—even now.  The primary reason he’s running circles around everyone is that he’s used to this pace, and the swamp in Washington isn’t—and they look like fools trying to compete with him—because they aren’t prepared.  People who are poor in America are that way because they made a choice to limit their income to only 40 hours a week—or less.  There are 168 hours in a week and people who are poor likely are only being productive a quarter of that time.  For those under that ratio—they are even worse off—and that is by their own inclination.

To dig out of a financial hole I once worked 96 hours a week at a regular job then on weekends I had a paper route and I worked for a tree trimming business. Essentially, I worked seven days a week on a primary job, then in weekend slots I trimmed trees all over Cincinnati and my wife and I shared several paper routes and that was the time we spent together.  I was in my late 20s and 30s when I was doing all this.  And I still found time to spend with my kids.  We still went to see movies together.  We still went out to eat and took nice vacations.  We had Kings Island season passes and went often—we made it work.  I never felt like I wasn’t getting enough sleep.  I read at least a book a week still and I felt I lived a very good and productive life—and we weren’t poor—that’s for sure.  We didn’t have unlimited money to throw at things and had to manage it, but we had to do that with every hour of our work day.  When my kids need braces or musical instruments we bought them.  Whatever they needed, we took care of it and we never used any form of welfare or government assistance to get through life—even though we could have.  If we needed more money—I just took on another job.

In that context, I have no sympathy for the poor or those who complain about not having enough money. Being poor in America is a choice and there isn’t merit to it when you drag all your loved ones through a depressed lifestyle just because you are too lazy to work.  The Bible for such people is often used as a mask—they might say something stupid like, “well you can’t take ‘it’ with you,” meaning material possessions and other justifications to explain away their inherit lazy nature—but it’s only an excuse for laziness.  I don’t admire the mountain man or the monk who decides to quit life and retreat to their thoughts on top of a mountain and devote themselves to poverty and lack of possession.  But I do admire the person who works 18 hours per day and employees over a 100 people—because they are the keys to being a productive society.  Those are the type of people who should be in charge of the economy.  Not some driveling idiot who hates money, wealth, and production. And in that context, we should all thank God that Donald Trump is finally in charge so we can talk about these things properly instead of with a bunch of emotional flap designed to hide a lack of personal ambition.

It’s not against the law to be lazy, or poor. If that is what people want to do, then let them have it.  But, they don’t have a right to skunk up the works of a perfectly successful, and wonderful capitalist economy where the natural spillover of productivity makes even the poorest people in America far better off than some of the richest in the godforsaken third world countries of the world—where political connections and aristocracy still rule the who has from the wish they dids. In America, it’s a choice and that is what makes America such a beautiful and moral country.  The best of the best are the job creators—because they bring opportunity to those who enjoy working hard.  By their very nature, they are not poor.  Rich people give jobs because they have produced an excess in their lives—poor people do not.  So to Trump’s point it’s quite clear he understands the difference—and for that we should celebrate with the flare of a Bugs Bunny as the stupidity of Yosemite Sam blows up his carefully laid plans in his face yet again as America cruises one more day toward a prosperity that was attempted to be robbed from future generations—but in a nick of time—wasn’t.

.Rich Hoffman

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The Truth About Stonehenge: Comments about the absurdity of summer solstice rituals

Visiting Stonehenge for me recently was one of the most important things I’ve ever done. It wasn’t just a bucket list item that I wanted to see at least once in my life—it was crucial. I have read so many books starting at a very young age where Stonehenge was contemplated that I needed to see the place in person. But to get to it you have to make a trip to England—and to do that you have to see a lot of other things and London usually has some part to play in such an expedition—so enough time in a schedule is necessary to accommodate such a task. However, this year I was able to get there and it was everything I expected and more. More than anything I was extremely impressed by the position the Neolithic complex held on the high plains of western England and the relation that all the mounds in the surrounding countryside had with the ancient stone ritual center. I think Stonehenge is remarkable in many different ways and its history is quite vast—much deeper than what the type of people who showed up at the summer solstice events which happen every year where druid loving people watch the sun rise on the longest day of the year.

I watched the events that these types of people participate in and it actually makes me pretty mad. The druids were not in any way involved with building Stonehenge. Their Celtic heritage is just another rendition of the modern nature worshipping hippie—the earth first losers who plague our modern politics with wishy-washy sentiment rooted in a new religion—making Mother Earth the new Yahweh or Shiva. For them and their followers of the modern age—Stonehenge is an earth worshipping symbol that a bunch of second handers from the region of Germany adopted to have sex parties and conduct themselves foolishly while under the ground dating back over 10,000 years were the relics of civilizations’ origins waiting still to be discovered. The reasons for Stonehenge’s alignments to the sun and other celestial bodies go far beyond the natural worshipping druids.

Yet like the American Indian the true meaning of the people who built Stonehenge goes undetected because intellectual curiosity cannot get past the necessity for spiritual redemption. Even the people studying Stonehenge cannot help but be pulled into the earth worship distortion that people like these druid lovers bring to the site during real archaeological study. When I was there the obvious layers of observation was distinctly obvious. On the surface, you have all these conclusions that are wrapped up in the methods of druid mythology which has always been associated with the site—unjustifiably. The druids came along many centuries after the final stages of construction at Stonehenge in 2500 BC. But to look properly at Stonehenge you have to be willing to look at Old Sarum to the south and Avebury to the north—as well as many hundreds of earthworks over the 50 miles of regional coverage. There was a lot going on in that region of England dating from the end of the last Ice Age to the relative present of 4000 years ago. For many millenniums—much longer than our present age—the Stonehenge region was very important and it goes well beyond the need to worship the earth.

Dating back 10,000 years—at least, are the skeletons of many sacrificed animals. What we know of Stonehenge and its modern rocks were built on the sacrificial site of these animal bones. Even in recent years—the last stages of Stonehenge after final construction, human sacrifices where happening with frequency—many of them quite brutal. I’m inclined to think that the stone alignments with the various solstices had less to do with celestial worship and more to do with keeping track of their progress throughout the year—likely to mark the points in time where interactions with important events occurred—such as when it became known how to calculate complicated mathematical concepts among a bunch of supposed nomads hunting and gathering for their entire lives and doing nothing else. Somewhere along the line of this 10,000-year span something happened that made people do remarkable things in that rather unremarkable landscape.

Then there is the problem of understanding that the builders of Stonehenge were not a regional phenomenon, but a global one. I am quite convinced after visiting Stonehenge and seeing things with my own eyes that the same people who built that place were also in North America building the many similar structures still seen all over the Americas. We are likely looking at a society that was much more advanced than we give it credit for, and was likely part of the culture that existed all over the world prior to the time the Book of Genesis was written. Many calculate that the Great Deluge took place around 2348 BCE which is just a few hundred years after the final touches of Stonehenge so we are dealing with more than just mythology and Earth worshiping killers. We’re dealing with a particularly potent hidden history that is right in front of our faces—yet we hide the truth behind our recent religious inventions—and that is compelling.

Evidence of life—even giant stones like what we see at Stonehenge do not last very long. Once you apply 20 or 30,000 years of wear to anything it often becomes unrecognizable and that to me is the most compelling aspect of the Neolithic monuments surrounding the Stonehenge area. Without question to me the same culture that built Stonehenge ended up in some way in North America and likely China. Without question, there were global sea trade routes moving all around the world at a time when we think of the people of Stonehenge as being separate and rising independently. The evidence simply doesn’t support that if you look at everything instead of just the Stonehenge complex. And then there is the case of the American Indian—they are obviously from the China region and settled in North America as a separate transaction of migration and they were interacting with these Stonehenge people—whoever they were—well before the druids walked out of Germany. All this is very revolutionary and certainly changes what we know about our own history. That’s why I so badly wanted to visit the site in person as opposed to reading about it as I have so much. It is clear that even lifelong researchers into Stonehenge are trying to fit it into what we know about science, instead of letting history properly tell its story with us being a willing audience. We’ve tried too hard to shape the narrative to fit our comfort level.

The biggest question about Stonehenge is—why there, and likely that answer is due to events that occurred before the Ice Age even happened. The uneventful plain of land in western England did not suddenly just pop up all these really remarkable monuments—something inspired people to do these things at a great cost to themselves—and that is where we need answers—and we’re not going to get it by watching a bunch of hippies worship the sun. I think the reason the sun was so important to all these ancient people clearly marks their need to demonstrate to the political masses a way to tell time. The sacrificial elements that often come out of collapsing societies tend to be what we study but the initial cause is where the focus should be. Why, and why there?

The mathematics involved alone extend well beyond the achievements of Greek study—it is time to accept that Greek and Roman empires were only ages and that all this had come before in times long forgotten. I think Stonehenge says to us that society wasn’t so primitive—at least aspects of it. People may have come from the surrounding countryside to become part of something bigger, and wiser at Stonehenge, and Avebury, but the people who built all these things were far less nomadic than we want to admit. They were rather advanced and that is something we need to deal with. They were a global society, not a regional one. It may take us 100 to 200 more years to find enough evidence to support some of the things I’ve said here, but the evidence is stacking up, and much of this is obvious. We just need more evidence before re-writing history books. But mark what I’m saying here, these druid rituals are just a bunch of left leaning hippies who are trying to use history to justify their religion of Mother Earth worship. They are as loony as the fools who sacrificed other human beings at Stonehenge trying to make it rain. They are not the builders of Stonehenge, or the causes for why it’s there to begin with. They are just more of a second-hand civilization riding the coattails of greatness and hoping that they can loot the credit for it over the lens of history. So far it has worked for them, but the evidence emerging is telling us the truth, and they are certainly blind to it.

Rich Hoffman
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Puerto Rico Votes to Become a State: How Donald Trump could have several new states join the union under his administration

Context is everything and my reasons for supporting Donald Trump for president even after all the outrageous claims against him are that I have it–context.  Over the past couple of months I have stood in four of the places where great international events have taken place. I stood precisely where an Islamic lunatic plunged a knife at police in front of Notre Dame in Paris.  I was at the bridge near Parliament in London where another Islamic terrorist ran people down killing them for no reason at all—but to support a radical religious theory.  I was also on the same streets and locations as the London Bridge attack just a few weeks ago.  Additionally, I was at the Ecuadorian Embassy where Wikileaks is doing the good work of unleashing material our American media and intelligence agencies can’t be trusted to control.  So I’ve touched the face of history a lot this year and I was in those places before these big events occurred because I identified them as hot spots I wanted to see because of the currents in the world that are moving fast in dangerous directions.  So when I say that Puerto Rico should be the 51st state it is because of that same deductive reasoning.  Donald Trump is a great president that is unlocking much of what these global terrorists are set against—and fear.  Yet the net result will be a love of freedom that will expand under the Trump presidency which is really what these terrorists and liberal assassins in the American media fear.  Nobody does it like Trump, watch his speech from Miami, Florida where he undid the disaster that Obama had created in regards to Cuban relations.

To watch in that clip Luis Haza play the Star Spangled Banner on a violin after hearing the story of how he first came to do it as a young child is precisely what America means to people all around the world.  It is what the terrorists are trying to avoid by stopping the spread of capitalist sentiment.  It is why extreme leftists have sought to move Middle Eastern Marxists into Europe—to maintain their stranglehold on those economies globally with the last resort of religion to hide the evil behind the mask of eternity.  But it’s not working and with Trump, that spread will increase dramatically, including adding the 51st state in America to his list of achievements—yes, in case you haven’t yet heard dear reader, Puerto Rico has voted to become the 51st state in The United States.  They are ready and willing to officially become part of our country and that is a wonderful thing.  They want it for many of the same reasons that Cuba wants it—and as I write this I think Cuba will become the 52nd state and that might happen by the time Mike Pence is in the White House.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/12/news/economy/puerto-rico-june-11-statehood-vote/index.html

http://www.puertoricoreport.com/natural-resources-of-puerto-rico/#.WUZqa-vyuM8

The terrorists in the world—and I’d classify the American political left in that category based on their violent reactions to the Trump presidency—want to sell the joy that American capitalism unleashes around the world by calling it “imperialism” lumping it into the same heap as the British Empire was—or the Roman.  The biggest difference is that America isn’t exactly going out of its way to acquire new territory; new territory wants to join the team.  As things stand now that little 100 mile wide island down in the Caribbean, closer to Jamaica than Florida filed for bankruptcy protection in May.  They have no way out of their financial troubles unless something dramatically changes for them and as it stands now, they are like a state—they have American citizenship—but they aren’t technically a state which has crippled them as far as corporate investments. So they are in a current no man’s land economically.  Their legacy costs far exceed their GDP which is so small; it’s not even worth talking about.  But Puerto Rico is a very nice place and it could easily become a booming economy with a GDP similar to Florida which is about a trillion dollars a year.  Hawaii produces only about $87 billion but it brings much more than that to the entire Pacific in value, and of course Alaska only produces $50 billion.  But Puerto Rico with its gateway access to the Caribbean and the Atlantic shipping lanes has tremendous potential that could and should be utilized to advance industry and economic expansion in that region by taking away the haze of indifferent statehood from the decision-making process.  Once companies know that Puerto Rico is an American state–they could unleash their investments.

That brings us to Cuba—in the 1950s it was a country headed in the direction of American statehood and that’s what should have happened until the Castro regime attacked and took over with communism as the national offering.  People seem to forget or ignore that all those little countries south of The United States have their share of communism, Marxism and socialism in their equations somewhere—and that’s why they are all poor countries.   Most of Mexico’s problems come from the fact that they founded their current country on concepts of Marxism and that has turned them into a disaster currently being run by drug cartels.  So I wouldn’t be against Mexico becoming the 53rd state maybe letting it divide itself up into three more states.  Then of course Guatemala, Honduras and Panama—if they voted for statehood, then I’d be all for letting them become part of the United States.  Their lives would improve dramatically because even the very poor in The United States live better than most of the middle class in Mexico and throughout South America do.  Most of the poor in the United States live better than the rich do in all of Africa–so becoming states in America would be a great thing for everyone.  The big thing they’d gain from statehood would be creating stable governments that businesses could then invest in.  Nobody in their right mind is going to invest much money in Mexico and Cuba as far as business because they do not have stable political climates.  Only tremendously wealthy companies now can afford to do anything in Mexico because the labor exchange is that much more advantageous.  But part of the reason there isn’t any major industry south of the American border is because of the lack of political stability.  Once that occurred everything would improve for everyone.

Under the Trump presidency I would love to see America add at least two more American states—starting with Puerto Rico.  If they want to be in our tent then I’m all for it.  I might even buy a place there as a real estate investment. I wouldn’t dare do it now, because the country is bankrupt, but if it became a state with opportunities to become a satellite of the great state of Florida—I’d be all for it.  Of course the political left would be against such a thing just as open terrorists would because they don’t want to see the spread of capitalism to these regions—they want Marxism in America.  They certainly don’t want America to spread its influence around the world more than it already has.  But if the people in those places want to sign up to become Americans—no matter where they come from—why not?  They’d be better off, and so would the current 50 states.  There would be more taxable revenue and at least we’d all be working with the same founding documents.  And if it were voluntary it wouldn’t be like America ran around the world conquering everyone with a superior military.  All we’d be doing is saying yes. So why the hell not? Republicans will likely increase their numbers in the House and Senate so the timing is about as good as it will get.  It’s all about context isn’t it?  Do we really want to help people become better off under a capitalist system and contributing to our current $18 trillion-dollar a year GDP.  Or do we want to let terrorists both foreign and domestic use illegal aliens from impoverished areas to collapse our system in America with overwhelming force and changing voting patterns.  Or do we control the impact with harmless Electoral votes while increasing our taxable income and expansion of business opportunity?  The situation is pretty clear to me.

Rich Hoffman

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Oskar Eustis and his Poor Understanding of History: The director of New York’s Julius Ceaser gets everything wrong

Oskar Eustis as the “artistic director” of the controversial Julius Ceaser play at the Shakespeare in the Park in New York City doesn’t even understand what kind of country America is, let alone have a proper commentary on translating the 400 year old play to contemporary subject matter.  He’s the guy who thought it smart to dress up Julius Ceaser as a modern-day Donald Trump and have the character murdered on stage by a “diverse” senate filled with women, people of color and many others stabbed to death by a mob.  We are a republic Oskar, not a stupid, mind numb democracy.  This play has nothing to do with America—in fact our mode of government was an invention to step away from this kind of mob driven drivel.  Shakespeare’s Julius Ceaser play is about revenge, murder and political conspiracy—and all that plot driven nonsense—but its relevancy to Donald Trump for which you made him the lead character in this modern rendition—with Trump Tower leering on the skyline in full view of the audience is an attempt to taint the waters of the ignorant into poking their unsophisticated asses into open insurrection—and it isn’t forgivable.

I feel like I say this all the time about way too many subjects but I know something about William Shakespeare. My favorite of his plays is Titus Andronicus which is a character I understand completely.  I love the way it reads and to date Julie Taymor has done the best job of taking the play to film with Anthony Hopkins doing a phenomenal job as Titus.  Many creative people have applied their hand to Shakespeare and for good reason, the material is rich and it forces actors to really dig deep in understanding theater from a long ago time in a language that is almost completely foreign to us now.  So it was an insult to me to hear how this latest New York modern rendition of Julius Ceaser was abusing its artistic power and trying to explain it away once Bank of America pulled out as a sponsor for wistfully putting Donald Trump into the contemporary role of “protagonist” brutally murdered by a bunch of conniving senators. You don’t have to look too far to understand that the play’s director in this case is rooting for the Chuck Schumers of the world to plot the same kind of assassination in modern politics and that his grasp on this modern history is as shallow as a dry lake bed in Nevada.

When Oskar Eustis said in his remarks on his play that “democracy depends on the conflict of different points of view, nobody owns the truth, we all own the culture,” he displayed a predilection toward insanity that I found quite alarming.  People clapped because they figured he was an art guy who knows more than they do about these matters, but honestly the lack of understanding displayed by Eustis of this material is shocking.  It is because democracy is unreliable that we even have a republic in America—and the analysis that William Shakespeare was constantly obsessed with about the Roman republic failures in his plays are explorations in mob violence for the sake of theater and the compelling subject matter it evokes.  The Donald Trump presidency is actually an evolution beyond this kind of animalistic chaos.  Trump is not power-hungry in the way that Julius Ceaser was and he is not a person who would ever be in a position to allow a mob of conniving senators access to him in a way they could commit murder.  Trump is much more strategic, and a lot smarter than people think he is.  I would warn people not to assume that they can “outthink” the Trump—which is one of the appealing aspects of his presidency for which people like me voted for him.  I don’t want a Shakespearian White House for a change.  I want an evolution beyond it—and I have found it in Trump.

https://publictheater.org/Tickets/Calendar/PlayDetailsCollection/SITP/Julius-Caesar/

We are not all equal in a democratic America.  Some of us work a lot harder than others and thus we need the representation of a republic to prevent the mob from running the show—because the lazy, the drug obsessed, and the sexually manipulative need to be kept at a distance from the legislative process as much as possible—and the hardest working among us should be the ones running things.  We can only determine value through merit so as far as owning the truth—it doesn’t all belong to us equally.  And regarding the political left, democracy has already defeated the progressive offerings philosophically and they don’t like it and have turned toward these violent threats to stay relevant in the world.  Oskar Eustis can play word gymnastics all he wants in an attempt to take the edge off what he did—which was an open plea for the modern senate to assassinate Donald Trump.  Eustis knew that most people wouldn’t understand the words spoken in the play and that most people haven’t worked hard to gain the meanings of Shakespeare’s language.  But dress up Ceaser in Donald Trump looking suits and make his wife sound just like Melania Trump and even the dumbest people in the audience will understand and that will be what they remember.  And at the pot parties before and after the big show—which always go on with creative people the stoned losers hope that out there in the audience is a James Hodgkinson who might be a committed enough leftist with nothing to lose in life who might sacrifice themselves for the cause of “democracy” otherwise known as “mob rule.”  Don’t kid yourself in thinking that this kind of talk is not happening.  Listen to what leftists say in public—what they say when the cameras are not on is much worse.

I found it particularly insulting that Oskar Eustis on the front page of their website actually said “Act Three, Scene One of Shakespeare’s JULIUS CAESAR takes place on the Ides of March, 44 B.C. By the time that scene is over, democracy will have vanished from the face of the earth for almost two millennia, until some English colonists on the eastern seaboard of North America start throwing tea into Boston Harbor.”  This open appeal toward the conservative movement to connect his play with the efforts of the American Revolution were disgusting—and again it’s not democracy that we’re analyzing, it’s a republic—a representative republic that requires the participation of the engaged and wise and allows the fools and addicts to beg for money on the sidewalk as “unequal” participants in history. There is quite a difference between the players on the field of a sporting event and those who just sit in the stands and watch.  Those who participate in our republic are on the field whether they vote, or become part of the mechanisms of government.  The mob is in the stands cheering or booing depending on how things go—but they are not equal participants.  People who smoke dope and study 400-year old plays about violence and the darkest of human emotions are not equal to the law student who spends 18 hours a day preparing their mind for a big case and will eventually become a senator perhaps after a successful career over many years.  They are not equal people.

Additionally I would offer that Donald Trump is a superior offering to anything that William Shakespeare ever conceived in his plays.  Understanding Donald Trump’s White House is beyond the grasp of people like Oskar Eustis and his thin understanding of history.  We are looking at an evolutionary design for which history will record and will be thankful for over the coming millennia.  To put Trump into the shoes of Julius Caesar is to try to take a full-grown adult and put baby shoes on them—Trump is far more evolved than anything Rome ever created as an emperor. The very stupid of our society may not understand how or why yet because history is being written with each moment that we breathe—but Trump is an idea that will change history for the better.  All Eustis could see as a director of a play was a way to try to hold those animalistic concepts of human nature to a White House that is moving well beyond the reach of the political left and their failed ideas.  All they have is the threat of violence to attempt to stay relevant in this tragedy of modern politics.  They are not equal in this American republic because their liberal concepts for our reality have been rejected in the theater of debate and all they have left is to attempt to redefine the definitions of fairness and the recollections of history to suit their current crises—and to hope that by calling our American system a democracy that enough dumb people will believe them in an effort to get out the vote and ignite their base for the 2018 midterms between the haze of marijuana smoke and a drug induced orgy of dirty, smelly, tattooed covered liberals laced with body piercings and a lack of deodorant forgotten due to their spending the day bitching about Donald Trump instead of getting a job and jumping on the many opportunities this administration has created for them to be more successful.  They like most liberals would rather complain, and plot murder so that they could keep their welfare checks and government jobs intact hoping beyond hope that Karl Marx will find his way into the philosophy of American politics before all the old hippies die off.  But in America its Adam Smith who set the stage and it’s not Julius Ceaser who runs our Republic—its Donald Trump, and he is a creation beyond the reach of classic literature.  That book is being written before our eyes for the first time in history—and it’s much more exciting than anything the human race has ever created before.

Rich Hoffman

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

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Megyn Kelly Uses Sex to Get Alex Jones Interview–and Gets Caught: A huge black eye for NBC News

Remember what I said about Megyn Kelly’s interview with Russian leader Vladimir Putin?   CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. It only pulled in 6.1 million viewers and she was pummeled by the ex-KGB leader in content. In her obvious hatred of Donald Trump she looked for the fire behind the smoke of the Russian investigation story but all she found was a smoke bomb for which Putin placed right in her lap with a smile.  That smile said, “there is no fire in Russia-but it brought you here so I could look up your skirt.  Russia had no collusion with the Trump campaign.”  After that failure you’d think she would have learned but clearly she is an average talent and has used her looks to advance her career and now she has thoroughly blown it—she picked Alex Jones as one of her next interviews. Obviously she is on a female power trip to attack all alpha males in their natural habitats and to launch NBC news back into a reputable place with their liberal base while attempting to discredit the 6 million viewers who watch and listen to Alex Jones. She didn’t know what she was getting into.

Jones had been recording her which she should have assumed, so the way she landed the interview with the controversial radio broadcaster was truly embarrassing leaving Kelly exposed in a big way before her show even aired.  She went for a kill and the gun ended up in her own mouth.  It was unbelievable how she went about convincing Alex Jones to speak to her.  So she did it all to herself.  He certainly didn’t go to her.  She played with fire and got burnt badly.  Jones released elements of their interview together along with secretly recorded tapes which told the whole story before Megyn Kelly was even able to get her content on the air showing that internet journalism is much faster than the old static network broadcasting which attempts to build up a story for days to pad the ratings. Jones beat her to the punch with his recordings which revealed Megyn Kelly groveling like a bar whore on Jones’ recent custody battle obviously pandering to him the way a woman might do who wants to be the next girl in a man’s life. She told him all the right things trying to gain his sympathy and she certainly used her sex to do it.

The subplot to Megyn Kelly’s climb to power started when she was given the 9 PM spot at Fox News where she challenged Bill O’Reilly for supremacy.  Then she accused Roger Ailes of sexual misconduct which if you listen to her interview with Alex Jones, she was obviously prone to flirting with men to get what she wanted.  Ailes probably talked about her sexy bras because she was showing them off hoping to get his attention—then when he did she sprang her trap and built a human resource case against him to bump up her pay and hold her position on the network, until she could find someone else to jump to—like the much more liberal NBC.  When she attacked Donald Trump in the Fox News debate of August 2015 which he turned on her very cleverly, it left her very publicly humiliated.  Over the next year she worked with Gretchen Carlson to oust Ailes at Fox which occurred on July 21st 2016.  He died a few months after a $20 million dollar settlement with Carlson.  And Megyn Kelly’s role in running an underground network of disgruntled women at Fox News continued to give radical leftist groups insight like a Trojan horse into the network which eventually brought down Bill O’Reilly—unjustifiably.  Megyn after her scorched earth at Fox News and a feud with Donald Trump that continued for over a year as he rose to power and prominence eventually winning the presidency, hurt her at Fox so she left for one of Trump’s enemies at NBC still looking for revenge over their inability to get back at him for leaving The Apprentice to run for president. Without Megyn picking a fight with Donald Trump, she doesn’t get the offer to work at NBC.

And that’s what we got from the behind the scenes stuff with Alex Jones is an insight into how she works—and that makes it clear what she’s always been doing.  Kelly has been building herself up as a kind of Wonder Woman—attacking all these masculine forces around the world at the highest level using sex to get into their door then using the evidence of their advancements to turn the tables on them.  Obviously it didn’t work with Putin, or Trump so for some reason she thought she could lure Alex Jones into a gotcha trap to attack his 6 million viewers—but he never let her get off the ground. This was the second big failure for her on a high profile exposé within a month and this one was considerably worse given the pre-interview recordings that Jones put out showing Kelly’s behavior when the cameras were turned off.

Megyn let Alex flirt with her to get what she wanted—she conducted herself no different than a stripper at a gentlemen’s club—massaging the ego of the customer she thought would give her what she wanted while all along she planned to attack him even though she promised that she never would.  Her bosses at NBC wanted blood and she was going to deliver with the progressive intention of further brining down masculinity in American culture by showing what a bunch of pigs these men were.  But Alex avoided the temptation to be taken seriously by a beautiful woman at a traditional network and stuck to his guns.  By recording who she was behind the camera it was easy to see how Ailes and many others over the years had been pulled into traps by power climbing women like Megyn Kelly only to be destroyed as a result when those women stick the knife in their backs–just a hint, if a woman is at your desk and she bends down so you can see down her shirt advertising her goods—she’s very aware of what she’s doing—it’s a good idea not to comment or even consider taking the bait.  In these modern times nobody does it as openly as Megyn Kelly.

When we say we are at war, this is what it looks like.  Long gone is the chivalry of battlefield antics where life and death are articulated with the strategy of political supremacy.  What we have now is literally just the war at the political level without the weapons of conflict to confuse the issue leaving this raw and unromantic battle for which we are seeing play out in our cultural roots. Megyn Kelly is attacking masculinity and tradition to give her political side a victory and Alex Jones is fighting against the corporate structure that is embedded in culture to remove the collectivist roots behind it which seek to spread a form of communism to every corner of the globe—and NBC is obviously committed to that very strategy—proud as a Peacock. But like a soldier being visited by a whore when the bullets weren’t flying Megan Kelly visited the recently divorced conspiracy leader at his home in Austin, Texas and tried to seduce him into a mistake.  But Alex was looking for the knife well before it came out and once again Megyn Kelly has shown that she is what Trump has always said about her—a lightweight. She was only given her show at NBC because of her sex and her ability to use it to get close to powerful men whom she could attack to gain power.  But this time she ran out of luck and her past collided with her future—and when given the chance, Alex Jones didn’t hesitate to conduct his metaphorical kill shot.  And it’s good that he did—because if he hadn’t—she would have.

Rich Hoffman

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

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Melania Trump is the key to Trusting the President: Jeff Sessions and a new kind of Washington operative

As Jeff Sessions testified before the senate on 6/13/2017 it was clear that politically we have certainly turned a corner in America.  And it didn’t begin with the Sessions testimony—that was simply a reflection of a political shift that was noticeable to anyone looking—it started with the Comey testimony of the previous week, which turned out to be a huge belly flop for the political insurgents against the incoming Trump administration.  Now looking back over the last five days I am quite proud of the CNN piece that I was a part of after the Comey testimony.  (CLICK HERE TO REVIEW)  We got it right while the rest of the nation was still working through what they had heard and that is directly reflective to our perspective at the front of the train.  Trump didn’t slow down through the media surge against him hoping that Comey would reveal something damaging to the new president—and by Monday he had what CNN called the weirdest Cabinet meeting ever, where Trump’s picks were in the same room at the same time for the first time since he took office.

 

The statists of the old political structure—those who have made a swamp out of Washington D.C. hated the Trump Cabinet press conference.  Trump broke all the rules by stating the accomplishments of his administration thus far, then allowing his Cabinet to speak one by one going around the big table in the White House.  Obviously most of his picks were unique in that they were like a dream team of political movers and shakers.  In the past most of those appointments would have been political hacks given jobs because of campaign contributions and favors otherwise owed.  But not this one—with the exception of Mitch McConnel’s wife—these were professionals, experts in their particular fields who were bringing a competency to Washington D.C. that just hasn’t been seen before.  Trump had outlasted the hardest part of the storm his political rivals could throw at him in just five months and the sun was starting to peak out. 

 

Supposedly Trump and Jeff Sessions have been at each other’s throats and the new Attorney General was about to be terminated.  But after the Cabinet meeting where Sessions spoke and Trump was engaged with his members individually, then after watching the Sessions testimony, it is obvious that we are dealing with a new caliber of political activity that radiates competency in ways previously undefined.  It won’t take long for this administration to simply outpace the Washington swamp creatures and rise about the murky waters for which all these lackluster political activists have made expensive livings for themselves at being entirely average.  No longer, and that’s where things are culminating in the Sessions testimony—an event he easily breezed through—are average results going to be tolerated. 

 

That returns my mind to the night of that CNN piece that a group of southern Ohio Trump supporters—myself included—provided.  I took a lot of notes on the Comey testimony and I felt I had a bead on what was happening, but my opinions were dramatically different than the story CNN was trying to frame.  I knew when I gave my statements that it provoked outrage from the political left because they had been hoping that the Comey testimony would put the last nail in the coffin of the Trump presidency.  But that’s not what happened.  Instead, Comey showed himself to be less reliable than we were led to believe and there were aspects to his testimony that pointed toward very evil actions—evil in the sense that Comey was deceiving himself of the boundaries of right and wrong.  That much was clear when he revealed himself as one of the intelligence leakers we’ve all been hearing so much about.  Once that happened the obstruction of justice criteria that leftist political insurgents were trying to establish now turned back toward the Hillary Clinton and Lorretta Lynch case explored and dismissed in 2016.  Now there was all kinds of fresh news to add—if these anti-Trump people held the same standard they were imposing on Donald Trump to Lorretta Lynch and Clinton—then there were major problems for those two, and for Comey.  They had wrecked their own case.

 

My soundbite given to CNN played all weekend and into the events leading up to the Sessions testimony, and as I look back on it, I am proud to have been so far out in front of the story with my gut instinct.  It’s not easy to go against the grain with something like that and to say things that might be used against you later.  The general feeling is that Trump is a liar and that Comey is Boy Scout honest when in fact the opposite is true.  Trump is reckless with his Twitter and his statements not because he’s a liar, but is innocently honest the way a young person might be who hasn’t yet been burned into extreme caution.  Comey on the other hand was calculated, manipulative and even deceitful and hiding all this behind a façade of goodness.  CNN wanted to find something wrong with Trump so they took what Comey said at face value when they shouldn’t have.  They obviously thought me and the other Trump supporters with me were lunatics who supported Trump blindly. After all, how could anybody say that Trump isn’t a liar given all the accusations leveled against him. 

 

The key to trusting Trump is in his business record of success, and his marriage to Melania.  If he were so inclined to deceitful practices, I am convinced that she would pressure him into a correction which makes her marriage to him vitally important and a major difference between the Donald Trump of old, and this new one who is president.  Melania is Trump’s hobby and he obviously loves her very much.  And she keeps him honest because she doesn’t put up with much of anything.  She is a good person and good people just don’t put up with bad people in their lives unless they allow themselves to be broken—and Melania is not a broken person in any fashion. Trump wouldn’t lie about the Russian investigation because she wouldn’t put up with it.  But Comey is a collectivist—he’s a person who obviously doesn’t care about merit, but about preserving the swamp—and he would do anything to protect it—including lying.  I don’t know his sweet little wife—the person he said he regretted not having dinner with that night he was invited to the White House to dine with Trump—but she obviously doesn’t hold Comey to the same kind of authenticity as Melania does Trump.  So I have no problem looking at Comey and considering that he lied—because I think he did.  Sessions on the other hand wanted to clear the air and willingly testified, and guilty people don’t tend to rush toward the truth, or the acquisition of it.  And if Trump was “guilty” of all these things, he wouldn’t be Tweeting and creating a written record of the exchanges.  Yes, this is truly new territory—we have not been here as a nation—ever.

After watching Jeff Sessions in his senate testimony and comparing it to Eric Holder and Lorretta Lynch it is obvious that we are dealing with a better caliber of people coming from this new White House.  Then watching how the political left acted when Jeff Sessions and many others in Trump’s Cabinet showed so much respect and passion as members of the Trump team we are seeing something very different—and I think the real credit goes back to Melania Trump.  I think it is she who makes the President a better man—better than he ever has been before.  And at this stage in his life I think he is extraordinarily trustworthy—and his fearless actions show it.  Trust worthy people trust other people—which Trump trusted Sessions to do a good job at the senate so he left for Wisconsin to do his job as president—which says a lot about how Trump operates as a manager.  With Melania she is not only a beautiful woman—physically, but she’s got it on the inside too—and that has the President’s heart.  So as CNN asked me, do you think Comey lied, or do I think Trump lied—I of course believe Trump and not Comey.  Why—because Melania is married to Trump and Comey is sketchy.  Therefore, Trump is the guy I trust and it’s obvious that I’m not alone.  Finally that administration is turning the corner and the left is losing ground—and now we’ll get to see something truly good coming from Washington D.C.  And it couldn’t have arrived a moment too soon. 

Rich Hoffman

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

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Theory H Utilization: Thinking correctly about Trump’s “workplace development” week

Since this has been “workplace development” week for the Donald Trump White House it would be proper for me to contribute a few cents to the value of this discussion.  As our economy functions from ever-increasing unemployment numbers—which is a wonderful thing—many people out there in the position to hire workers get stressed out in how to acquire new talent.  Just a few months ago when discussing supply chain challenges downstream from me, I suggested that by opening up a second and third shift that they could dramatically increase their productive output.  So the question came back to me–how would we go about doing that?  I looked at them for a moment mystified that they really didn’t comprehend how to do something so simple—and the more I speak to people all across America, they are really lost as to how to acquire new talent and how to get proper productive output out of all 24 hours of a day. It just happens that this is another one of my specialties and given this week’s White House emphasis, I’ll share a few things to help those most in need given the urgency created by such a booming economy such as what we now have—thanks to President Trump.

I get each week dozens and dozens of offers from job recruiters who offer to help solve a company’s recruiting needs—because honestly this is one of those things that most companies are terrible at.  It’s hard to know what kind of people to hire and how to build teams out of those people once you’ve hired them.  As I’ve stated before, some of the past occupational fields that I’ve been inclined to besides archaeology—which is a study of human cultures, so it’s related to these modern enterprises, was psychiatry.  I’ve always been interested in what makes human beings tick, so when it comes to interviewing and recruiting the right people for the right job-it’s always been something that comes naturally for me.  Then team building with those individuals brings another level of challenge because people often resent being placed together in ways that are not authentic to their experiences—so given all those dynamics, most employers just throw up their hands and hope that other people can be hired to handle those problems for them—the way an attorney might handle all the legal issues.  However, I would say that recruiting is the most important thing a company does aside from figuring out what their product is and how to deliver it to the marketplace.

There are a lot of these “Theory X” people out there who have been taught for two generations that the best way to work with people is with this kind of authoritarian relationship where essentially workforces are communist camps full of Marxists and whatever the “superior” says is what the mass collective must do for the health of the company.  I have sat stunned in many meetings where people who call themselves conservatives politically have this archaic relationship with their workers who actually believe that people should give up their individual rights for the good of the company they work for—and that this is somehow productive for the end use intentions of the organization.  Not at all.  Theory X motivations get a rebellious work force that will tell you one thing to your face, but they’ll do everything they can to drag ass something without constant cattle prodding and discipline to evoke productive results.  People who are obsessed with Theory X are terrible at managing multi-shift production needs.

Theory X

Theory X is based on pessimistic assumptions of the average worker. This management style supposes that the average employee has little to no ambition, shies away from work or responsibilities, and is individual-goal oriented. Generally, Theory X style managers believe their employees are less intelligent than the managers are, lazier than the managers are, or work solely for a sustainable income. Due to these assumptions, Theory X concludes the average workforce is more efficient under “hands-on” approach to management.[1] The ‘Theory X’ manager believes that all actions should be traced and the responsible individual given a direct reward or a reprimand according to the action’s outcomes. This managerial style is more effective when used in a workforce that is not intrinsically motivated to perform. It is usually exercised in professions where promotion is infrequent, unlikely or even impossible and where workers perform repetitive tasks.[2]

According to Douglas McGregor, there are two opposing approaches to implementing Theory X: the “hard” approach and the “soft” approach. The hard approach depends on close supervision, intimidation, and imminent punishment. This approach can potentially yield a hostile, minimally cooperative work force that could harbor resentment towards management. The soft approach is the literal opposite, characterized by leniency and less strictly regulated rules in hopes for high workplace morale and therefore cooperative employees. Implementing a system that is too soft could result in an entitled, low-output workforce. McGregor believes both ends of the spectrum are too extreme for efficient real world application.[3] Instead, McGregor feels that somewhere between the two approaches would be the most effective implementation of Theory X.

Overall, Theory X generally proves to be most effective in terms of consistency of work. Although managers and supervisors are in almost complete control of the work, this produces a more systematic and uniform product or work flow. Theory X can also benefit a work place that is more suited towards an assembly line or manual labor type of occupation.[4] Utilizing theory X in these types of work conditions allow the employee to specialize in a particular area allowing the company to mass produce more quantity and higher quality work, which in turns brings more profit.

Theory Y

“Theory Y is almost in complete contrast to that of Theory X”. Theory Y managers make assumptions that people in the work force are internally motivated, enjoy their labor in the company, and work to better themselves without a direct “reward” in return.[5] Theory Y employees are considered to be one of the most valuable assets to the company, and truly drive the internal workings of the corporation.[6] Also, Theory Y states that these particular employees thrive on challenges that they may face, and relish on bettering their personal performance.[2] Workers additionally tend to take full responsibility for their work and do not require the need of constant supervision in order to create a quality and higher standard product.[4]

Because of the drastic change compared to the “Theory X” way of directing, “Theory Y” managers gravitate towards relating to the worker on a more personal level, as opposed to a more conductive and teaching based relationship.[5] As a result, Theory Y followers may have a better relationship with their higher-ups, as well as potentially having a healthier atmosphere in the work place. Managers in this theory tend to use a democratic type of leadership because workers will be working in a way that does not need supervision the most.[4]

In comparison to “Theory X”, “Theory Y” adds more of a democratic and free feel in the work force allowing the employee to design, construct, and publish their works in a timely manner in co-ordinance to their work load and projects. A study was done to analyze different management styles over professors at a Turkish University. This study found that the highly supervised Theory X management affected the research performance of the academics negatively. In general, the study suggests that the professional setting and research based work that professors perform are best-managed with Theory Y styles.[5]

While “Theory Y” may seem optimal, it does have some drawbacks. While there is a more personal and individualistic feel, this does leave room for error in terms of consistency and uniformity.[3] The workplace lacks unvarying rules and practices, and this can result in an inconsistent product which could potentially be detrimental to the quality standards and strict guidelines of a given company.[1]

 

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

I’m not particularly in love with Theory Y either, because of the last paragraph of the explanation above, but it is far superior in the modern marketplace—especially in this climate where unemployment is low and workers have a lot of options to work with.  So new inventions are needed and that’s what I spend most of my time working on professionally, such as what we might call a Theory H, for “Hoffman.”  Employees take on a job for many reasons, primarily so that they can make a living—they exchange their time for money—which they naturally resent at an instinctual level.  But, an opportunity to do a job that has structure and purpose bring with it a currency that often isn’t acknowledged in economic measuring patterns.  So I would suggest that while hiring, hire the best people by determining in the interview if they are working just for a paycheck, or if that is just one aspect of their desire for a job.  If there are other elements to their job seeking desires, such as “getting out of the house to have their own thing,” or they are hungry to build a life for themselves as a young person, if you can see a light on behind their eyes there is usually something you can work with if you are willing to coach them along.  I wouldn’t say that a democratic process is the optimal one because as everyone who reads me knows, the collective is not superior to the individual, but you can’t have a bunch of individuals running around doing whatever they want either.  So you have to get individuals to bring their magic to the table without killing their ambition with too many collective considerations.  As a manager you have to pick and choose what you’re points of emphasis will be, unlike the Theory X person who acts like a communist dictator and tries to make a job into a work camp in Siberia.  Once you’ve defined your critical path points the individuals you’ve hired will go to great measures to help you get where you want to go—because all people like to be a part of something successful.  So let them share in that success and most of your employment needs will be solved.  It’s not always about money with most people, often it’s about having the opportunity to feel pride in the work they do and not have that pride robbed from them by a Theory X tyrant.

It is one of the great privileges in life to be able to offer a job to someone.  They get a chance to do well for their families and you get contributors to a vision that is the engine to productivity in the nation’s GDP.  Each employee should be treated as an asset with life potential with whatever company they happen to work for. Team building comes naturally out of setting the proper objectives for a workforce so that they can be a part of a winning opportunity.  Once they see that they will often do great things to achieve a victory and be a part of a winning team.  It is not enough to ask them to be a part of a team and to sacrifice their individuality to the group enterprise.  They must want to win for their own selfish desires.  When they do that the team does win, so when recruiting, hire people hungry to win at life.  Then, and only then can productive exploits on second, third and weekend shifts be properly explored with all the new opportunities coming forth from this new Trump White House—the hiring process is only scary to the Theory X people.  They need to retrain themselves to think properly in this modern economy.  The recruiters out there exist essentially to help all the out-of-date Theory X types—but that’s not necessary if you understand who you are bringing in and give them the opportunity to be successful.  If give that chance—most people will thrive if they still have that glimmer in their eye left over from childhood that still has hope that they can be a part of something that’s great so they can sleep well at night knowing that they aren’t just on a job—but are a part of something really magnificent.  It doesn’t matter if the product is just making straws for Burger King or if you are making spaceships for commercial flight—greatness is in doing extraordinary things with everyday events and once you establish that, everything else takes care of itself.

Rich Hoffman

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The Call to Adventure: A 52 Week Project which photographs authenticiy

It was strange recently getting yet another notification from the Ohio courts of Butler County that I’ve been selected for jury duty because my name ends up in the hat so often due to my voting patterns.  I noticed while filling out the form which included my wife and kids that none of them have what you might call—“traditional” jobs.  My wife is a happy housewife, my oldest daughter a professional photographer who is very highly sought after and my youngest is an illustrator.  As I write this she, (my youngest) is doing a commission piece on the Batman villain The Joker shown below.  But none of the ladies in my family have a “traditional” job where they go to work, punch in and sell away their day for cash.  I know that’s the typical way that we measure economic success, but I’ve always been a big supporter of that type of freedom—especially for women because they tend to invest more into children, households and the emotional nurturing of a family as a whole.  When people are free of that primary concern of having to sell away their time for money, it allows them to invest in less tangible aspects of family building, so it makes me proud to see that among the women closest to me, they are all on that type of path.  They don’t have a “boss” out there they must yield to, and that is something I think is very important to family development, because it makes them the authority figures of their own lives which is why that question is asked on a jury selection form.  Attorneys obviously want to know that the people in their pool are “normal” people miserable like everyone else—so the way I answered that question likely will knock me out of the selection process.

My photographer daughter has really impressed me; she is taking her business to a new level as seen in these included videos.  She’s doing something called the 52 Weeks Project where each week she is picking a subject to photograph then she shows how she comes up with the shots and how the editing process goes on arriving at the final product.  She’s a full-time mom, but on both of these efforts she was up at dawn before her little boy woke up wanting breakfast and conducted these pictures for her project squeezing in a lot of creativity into an already packed day.  She’s been busy with booked appearances for several weeks now and coming up shortly after this publication she has a photo shoot in Chicago.  So what you see here is a very developed photographer who is expecting herself to be one of the great ones.  What she does is out of pure passion which I liken back to having the ability to be free of having a “boss” in her life who governs her away from home while on a time clock. That freedom has allowed her to expand her personal life in ways that I think are quite extraordinary—and necessary to achieve the level of art that she is shooting for.

Even her subjects are unique in the scheme of the photographic community.  Her first entry into the 52 weeks project was “A Call to Adventure” which I thought she managed to squeeze a lot out of while working in a very limited area within Cincinnati.   For those who don’t understand why a “Call to Adventure” is important it’s a classic motif most appropriately defined by Joseph Campbell in the telling of mythologies.  Usually after the first act of a movie or the introductory phase of a novel the main character is faced with a jumping off point from the static patterns of their normal life and into the promise of adventure provoked by some dynamic force. For some people the “Call to Adventure” might be as simple as a stranger approaching you from the back of a cab at a stop light while you’re walking to work in New York and asks you to help them get to the airport.  You must then decide to help or not because if you do, the static patterns of your day will be disrupted and that could have unpleasant consequences.  Then for others it might be an opportunity to fly to Cambodia to do sex traffic rescue work in some steamy jungle nightmare, but while there you make a new archaeological discovery that changes the world perspective on our knowledge of history.  The “Call to Adventure” is often how you can dramatically enrich your life for the better with vast experience, but to do so you must step away from your static patterns and allow dynamic forces into your life.

For instance, a friend of mine who worked on the Trump campaign in 2016 called me on a very busy day last week and asked me if I could appear on CNN the next day.  I had scheduled a lot of events and I really didn’t have the time.  After all I had an oversea meeting planned at the very same moment I was supposed to be on with Anderson Cooper.  So did I answer the call and go on CNN which was likely just going to do a hit piece.  As it turned out the CNN people were very gracious and were not the kind of gotcha people who Rush Limbaugh surmised when he talked about the event on his show.  I did the CNN segment along with some other peers and it got people talking and was fun to do.  I still managed to get all my work done—although it was different from my usual day and I could point to many times in my life where answering the “Call to Adventure” directly led to some very unusual experiences which ultimately enhanced my life.

I have learned over time to never get too rigid about things.  The “Call of Adventure” is something I consider so important that I often go out of my way to find it with a very laissez-faire approach to living and personal management.  I may start the day with all kinds of planned activities but by the end of it, I end up doing things I never thought I would at the start and that comes from saying yes to the “Call of Adventure.”  So it made me particularly proud to see my photographer daughter out there capturing not only dramatic photos but articulating that difficult concept artistically.  She, standing at the entrance of a forest goes back to some of the great Arthurian legends of the Middle Ages where the knights would all enter the forest of their various adventures at different points basically to establish that no two paths of adventure were the same for other people.  People must pick their own paths in life to be living truly authentic lives so here was my kid showing this rather difficult concept to explain with a simple photograph.  But as you can see from the editing process, it’s not so simple.IMG_4644

This brings me back to the importance of my girls not being encumbered with a traditional job—especially while raising their children.  If they put their children in daycare, there would be many fewer opportunities for the kids to experience the wonder of a life lived authentically, because the static schedules of daily living prohibit it—and true intellectual learning is often crippled in children as a result.  But for a mother who is there ready to answer that “Call to Adventure” at the slightest provocation a simple trip to the grocery store on a sunny summer in July might lead to a lifetime of discoveries that stay with young people forever because if the schedule of acquiring food is relaxed there may be opportunities for adventure that come up along the way—someone might need help changing a flat tire or a snake may be caught under a car in the grocery store parking lot and need help getting over to the cool grass before somebody runs it over.  You just never know—but there is tremendous value in following the “Call to Adventure” and it makes me feel very good to see that my daughter has matured to a point where she can understand it well enough to photograph.  That takes talent!

Rich Hoffman

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Why Jim Comey Should go to Jail: How the former FBI director lied and how

Given the nature of the subject and the amount of time I personally gave to it last week this is sort of a three-part response to the Comey testimony provided on June 8th 2017 to the senate.  (Click here to review the previous entries.)  So for this let me answer the question that was given to me by CNN and explain my reasons—the question of course was whether or not I thought James Comey—former director of the FBI, should go to jail.  In my 20 second answer, I couldn’t give the kind of answer I wanted because of the necessary theatrics of television so here it is in writing.  Yes, James Comey should go to jail for lying under oath and for subversion of our republic.  I’m sure he was lying, and I’m sure he held back information deliberately which is in many cases equivalent to lying and he is for all practical purposes a villain.  Here’s why.

There was something that really bothered me about the way James Comey prepared his statements before the testimony, and the way he referred to tangible observations in such a lurid way.  As I said to CNN, Comey’s written testimony along with the delivery of additional information to the senate reminded me of the early James Bond novels from Ian Flemming–of a much more disgraceful and reckless British agent than we saw in the films with Sean Connery and Roger Moore.  The flair of Comey’s writing style reminded me not of a long time FBI agent—but actually that of a pent-up author wanting desperately to mater in the world just a few years before turning 60 years of age.  My comments below come from the experience of being an employer myself and working with people the same age as James Comey—and in reading voluminous amounts of books over the years—particularly the work of Ian Fleming.  I know all too well that when you hire fire and discipline around a thousand employees over a period of time some of them by nature will not agree with you.  Sometimes they will work against you, and at some point in time will think you are the most evil person in the world because they can’t get you to see things their way—and they find themselves on the outside looking in—which often hurts their feelings.  There are people out there who think I’m the most mean and evil person in the world.  Does that make them correct?  Of course not, but from their perspective their opinion is all they care about.  And this is what we are talking about with Comey—an ex-employee who gambled and lost his job and is now on the outside and it hurts him.  His testimony says all the things we need to know. If you know what to look for Comey spelled it all out before the hearing even took place by what he had written down, then illustrated gloriously during his sworn statements.

https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/os-jcomey-060817.pdf?platform=hootsuite

Again, this is experience on my part that I offer this breakdown, but Comey opened the door to it by his own testimony.  Because he did that we have to account for the way he thinks and what his motives were based on the instinct of experience. For instance, below are a few of the Comey written comments that I found particularly damning for him so let me talk about them one at a time which will then be summarized to properly articulate my conclusion of why Comey should go to jail.  Here is the first:

The IC leadership thought it important, for a variety of reasons, to alert the incoming President to the existence of this material, even though it was salacious and unverified. Among those reasons were: (1) we knew the media was about to publicly report the material and we believed the IC should not keep knowledge of the material and its imminent release from the President-Elect; and (2) to the extent there was some effort to compromise an incoming President, we could blunt any such effort with a defensive briefing.

That’s not what the IC was doing on their January 6th meeting with Trump where Comey cleared the room to report the unverified salacious and unverified material to Trump.  They were showing the new president what they had on him and were warning him of information they “could” possess if needed for their own preservation.  They were guilty of trying to create the kind of leverage that Comey complained about later which indicates that they were prone to thinking this way themselves—as a point of reference.  The IC (intelligence community) was trying to throw Trump a bone so that they could win him over for their further employment.  When Trump failed to feel threatened by this attempt, the members of the IC were deeply concerned as they left Trump Tower that day and it was at this point that the leaks from the IC began to flow freely to the press.

I felt compelled to document my first conversation with the President-Elect in a memo. To ensure accuracy, I began to type it on a laptop in an FBI vehicle outside Trump Tower the moment I walked out of the meeting. Creating written records immediately after one-on-one conversations with Mr. Trump was my practice from that point forward. This had not been my practice in the past. I spoke alone with President Obama twice in person (and never on the phone) – once in 2015 to discuss law enforcement policy issues and a second time, briefly, for him to say goodbye in late 2016. In neither of those circumstances did I memorialize the discussions. I can recall nine one-on-one conversations with President Trump in four months – three in person and six on the phone.

By his own admission Comey never did this with any other president prior, but the meeting rattled Comey to such an extent that he felt he better start now because it was always his intention after January 6th to rid the Beltway of this Trump threat. That was the same type of behavior that an employee who knows they are about to be fired does in an attempt to save their job, they begin gathering written recollections to use in human resources later. Comey lacking personal courage reverted to a passive aggressive approach, which was writing everything down. Comey understood early that Trump had doubts about him and his leadership in the FBI so he began to keep notes that he could use later to extort his futher employment.

 

My instincts told me that the one-on-one setting, and the pretense that this was our first discussion about my position, meant the dinner was, at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job and create some sort of patronage relationship. That concerned me greatly, given the FBI’s traditionally independent status in the executive branch.  A few moments later, the President said, “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.” I didn’t move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed. We simply looked at each other in silence. The conversation then moved on, but he returned to the subject near the end of our dinner.

Here Comey is hoping to use his experience as an FBI agent and director to overcome any doubt about what he’s saying about Trump.  This detail about his personal dinner with Trump in the Green Room of the White House is particularly revealing.  First Comey wants to show that he has a story to tell and is trying to attract agents for a big book deal, or even a Hollywood movie based on his experiences.  The liberals of the Beltway who know film producers likely put the bug in his ear which he was receptive to after that January 8th meeting where Comey started writing things down.  The salacious details here say a lot about Comey’s motives because he goes into almost screenplay detail—which has nothing to do with facts the way you’d expect an FBI director to illicit.  Instead he relied on his feelings which are more aligned with the way a novelist would write.  People forget that Ian Flemming, the great British writer and creator of James Bond was a British Naval Intelligence Division agent before he was a writer and if you go back and read his first book, Casino Royal, it actually sounds a lot like the way Comey writes in his interactions with Trump.  Since Comey himself offered that “instinct” is admissible as evidence for the deduction of reason in this case, then I feel quite comfortable in concluding that Comey decided he was going to be a writer after his FBI career and Trump was going to be his villain that he’d write about.  He’d be the toast of the swamp as his friends around the Beltway would honor him for all time as the Boy Scout who saved them from the lunatic businessman from New York during a short-lived presidency.  The more he thought about it, the more alluring the thought became until it became so obvious that Trump could see it on his face.  Prior to that January 27th dinner meeting, Comey had hidden his fantasy—but Trump could detect it and it changed the way that Trump thought about Comey as director of the FBI.

On February 14, I went to the Oval Office for a scheduled counterterrorism briefing of the President. He sat behind the desk and a group of us sat in a semi-circle of about six chairs facing him on the other side of the desk. The Vice President, Deputy Director of the CIA, Director of the National CounterTerrorism Center, Secretary of Homeland Security, the Attorney General, and I were in the semi-circle of chairs. I was directly facing the President, sitting between the Deputy CIA Director and the Director of NCTC. There were quite a few others in the room, sitting behind us on couches and chairs. The President signaled the end of the briefing by thanking the group and telling them all that he wanted to speak to me alone. I stayed in my chair. As the participants started to leave the Oval Office, the Attorney General lingered by my chair, but the President thanked him and said he wanted to speak only with me. The last person to leave was Jared Kushner, who also stood by my chair and exchanged pleasantries with me. The President then excused him, saying he wanted to speak with me. When the door by the grandfather clock closed, and we were alone, the President began by saying, “I want to talk about Mike Flynn.” Flynn had resigned 5 the previous day. The President began by saying Flynn hadn’t done anything wrong in speaking with the Russians, but he had to let him go because he had misled the Vice President. He added that he had other concerns about Flynn, which he did not then specify. The President then made a long series of comments about the problem with leaks of classified information – a concern I shared and still share. After he had spoken for a few minutes about leaks, Reince Priebus leaned in through the door by the grandfather clock and I could see a group of people waiting behind him. The President waved at him to close the door, saying he would be done shortly. The door closed. The President then returned to the topic of Mike Flynn, saying, “He is a good guy and has been through a lot.” He repeated that Flynn hadn’t done anything wrong on his calls with the Russians, but had misled the Vice President. He then said, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” I replied only that “he is a good guy.” (In fact, I had a positive experience dealing with Mike Flynn when he was a colleague as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency at the beginning of my term at FBI.) I did not say I would “let this go.” The President returned briefly to the problem of leaks. I then got up and left out the door by the grandfather clock, making my way through the large group of people waiting there, including Mr. Priebus and the Vice President. I immediately prepared an unclassified memo of the conversation about Flynn and discussed the matter with FBI senior leadership. I had understood the President to be requesting that we drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December. I did not understand the President to be talking about the broader investigation into Russia or possible links to his campaign. I could be wrong, but I took him to be focusing on what had just happened with Flynn’s departure and the controversy around his account of his phone calls. Regardless, it was very concerning, given the FBI’s role as an independent investigative agency.

Even going to the trouble to mention the grandfather clock in this segment of Comey’s testimony is more of an attempt to paint a picture of the moment more than just reporting the facts.  This only reiterates what I said about Comey wanting to be a novelist because the clock has nothing to do with the facts of the matter. The point of this entire segment is to paint Comey as the sole survivor of a treacherous cloud of villainy.  Comey knew that his Beltway friends would soak all this up so he added extra detail for the sake of drama.  In the contents of the discussion its obvious Trump wanted to protect his friend Michael Flynn from further embarrassment as the guy had just resigned a few days prior.  There was no conspiracy or ill intent on the part of the president—since “instinct” is now admissible as evidence.  What is particularly revealing here is the part where Comey tries to portray himself completely in control by saying “I did not say I would ‘let this go.” The president returned briefly to the problem of leaks.  I then got up and left out the door by the grandfather clock”—and so on and so on.  Listening to Comey speak in writing he was very much in control and was the protagonist of his own adventure, but from what he stated in his testimony he added that he was terrified of this one on one with Trump and he felt compelled that the weight of the office was upon him to stop the Russian investigation.

Essentially Comey decided some time before the election of 2016 that regardless of what happened he was going to seek money and fame in the private sector which likely shaped the way he handled the Hillary Clinton case.  If he had prosecuted her—like he should have, the agents and movie makers would have held it against him.  So days before the election when things were tight between Trump and Clinton he tried to take the light off her and help her out a few percentage points—because he wanted his book deal.  It would have paid a lot more than he made as an FBI director and he’d gain fame for he and his family—along with his professor friends who leak stories to The New York Times. From Comey’s perspective of trying to make a little money for his family he’s a hero—he’s the protagonist standing up to the president in the Oval Office like a Boy Scout honest, clean and full of pride in Amerca. But in reality he was just another swamp monster working against the American people, actively subverting justice to keep a political party in power and when none of that worked he became one of the big leakers to the media in an attempt to bring down a properly elected American president violating his employment agreement with the FBI and the natural trust his position carried with it as head of the intelligence community.

Comey lied because he took it upon himself to become an activist, he wrote down information on government computers to be used as a weapon—no wonder he let Hillary Clinton go—but he did not state these intentions which were clearly present.  Instead he painted himself as a bastion of the law who would uphold truth, justice and the American way. In reality he was just another cowering bureaucrat trying to hide in the swamp and ride out his years as he propped himself up as a future writer in the private sector.  He lied because he did not state his intentions correctly for why he actually became a leaker.  He said it was to preserve justice—but in reality it was to take down a president he didn’t like from the beginning and he wanted to be a hero to the left.  He also lied in saying that he wasn’t political.  His actions were very political and more than justified his termination without any further drama.  But we all know how that turned out. Comey placed himself on a pedestal hoping to play at being the sacrificial lamb for the good of the ”Beltway.”  But what he revealed of himself was that he was an activist for the preservation of the status quo and a leaker of information gathered in the Oval Office to be spread upon a salacious press in the way a plot from House of Cards might have a hard time believing.  Yet that is precisely what happened.  That is why Comey should go to jail. He abused the trust of his office. He sought to bring down an American president’s administration, and he misrepresented himself under sworn testimony. And he wrote down the evidence forcing us all to act on it.

And that’s that.

Rich Hoffman

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

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