President Trump: Not sweating the small stuff

Based on the Saturday Night Live skit, not the Fox Business Debate that took place on November 10, 2015, Donald Trump should be president. Of course I liked a little of what most of the candidates talked about during the debate—which was much, much better than the CNBC debate. (I’m still surprised that there is such a channel as CNBC.) But the real test of a modern president was not shown during the debates, it was on Saturday Night Live which I think was far bigger of an impact on the future of politics than anybody really has put forth in an analysis. If Bill Clinton had his saxophone moment to show he was a unique politician that launched him to victory in 1992, Donald Trump had his just a few days before the big Fox Business debate on SNL. The skit where America was a few years into the Trump presidency was bold, and powerful. Then for Trump to declare that all that was a mild forecast underplayed meant that America has to give the billionaire a chance at the big chair—if for anything else but to call his bluff. Trump is thinking big—really big, and that is exactly what we all need right now after 28 years of really small-mindedness coming from the Executive Branch.

As much as I like to deal straight with things to make objectives happen, most of the time I have to use every tool in an intellectual tool box to accomplish the intended task—whatever it is. Sometimes you have to be forceful, sometimes very diplomatic. Most of the time nobody understands what you are doing because they all have their own time frame of accomplishment built around their perspective—which is often limited. I find I have to do a lot of maneuvering around people to get anything done, and I take into account the weaknesses of the people I’m dealing with to accomplish it. I often view these occurrences like I would talk to someone who does not speak English as a primary language. I talk to them nice and slow almost like a child not to be demeaning, but because they can’t possibly understand what I’m thinking or my passion to accomplish the task. So you find that you have to talk to everyone in their language on their terms so that they can understand what it is you want to accomplish. Other groups of people watch this behavior and assume that you are catering to the wishes of others over what they want to do and conflicts often ensue. However, in the end, everyone eventually sees what I saw in the beginning, and everyone ends up living happily ever after. But not without a lot of back stabbing, squabbling, and social manipulation—and this is true within family structures as well as multi-million dollar business transactions. I never worry about the small stuff because it’s the big stuff that matters and by the time we get there, the small stuff naturally aligns with the overall strategy anyway. So getting stuck on the details will only stop the objective.

We have been taught in our education systems that the “devil is in the details,” and often he is. Small things can kill big things if allowed to manifest in such a way that they sicken the intention with stagnation. But often, that devil can be killed with sheer will and speed. Most of the time an intense approach to a problem will overcome those details quickly unifying everyone under a common cause—even though their viewpoints are radically different—it’s a bit of a trick that time and experience can teach. It’s not a good idea to get stuck on the details when the overall objective is the target. I think of the process comparable to target shooting. You don’t think about the detail of the bullet, or the workings of the gun. You just aim and shoot, and the best way is to do it quickly with muscle memory the way I have learned in bullwhip work—because most of the time there is no luxury of aiming and shooting to hit a target. The marketplace of life demands speed and accuracy. Not just one or the other. Life requires both to be successful.

Out of all the candidates on that stage at the Fox Business debate, only Trump understands the process of thinking big and getting people of many different backgrounds and political approaches to buy into his overall strategic objective. Here’s why, Trump was able to walk onto a very liberal show like Saturday Night Live and get a bunch of very liberal writers to put together a skit like the one shown above, which contextually showed a potential Trump presidency which answered all the questions that people have been asking about him. Trump as a big thinker doesn’t sweat the small stuff, so he can’t answer those questions in a way that people who worry about every little thing will be satisfied with. But in the context of a popular progressive show on NBC which is very mainstream, Trump was able to bend everyone to his will. That’s the kind of president he will be, and he essentially made a promise that put the burden on America to take him up on the challenge. It was an irresistible proposal.

No other person on the debate stage has that kind of power, or confidence. There really isn’t any other competition on the Republican side. You can pick the nice guy in Ben Carson, or the overachiever in Donald Trump. Everyone else is just more of those 28 years of lackluster executive office presence, and the United States likely won’t survive. It won’t hold four more years let alone another decade. The debt clock is ticking up to nearly $20 trillion and there is no way to recover from that. America has to give Donald Trump a chance or else. There is no more time for hopes, dreams and details. The next president will have to be a person of epic personality to pull all the radical elements together to achieve a strategic objective only they can see. Trump revealed what was in his head on Saturday Night Live and he connived the writers and producers to help him sell that vision.

I can only imagine how Trump would behave if he were in the White House and were wheeling and dealing with congressman, senators, foreign dignitaries, and business leaders every hour on the hour. I honestly think he’d be in heaven and the net result of his joy might just carry over into the results joked about in the Saturday Night Live skit. It’s a dare our country must take. All the issues of theory are now out the window. The Democrats only have socialists to offer and the typical conservatives only have more of the same that has allowed under their watch $19 trillion in debt and loss after loss on the global stage. At some point a leader within the Republican ranks has to be willing to call that behavior stupid and Trump is the only one really poised to do that without losing his ability to negotiate.   If Trump can unite the entertainment community which is crazy leftist in their approach to all social problems, then he can do it with the world at large. I see no downside to a Trump as president. I only see positives.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Roger Waters is Just Another Brick in the Wall of Anti-Semitism: Pink Floyd’s socialist propaganda

I have never been a fan of Pink Floyd. First of all the name is ridiculously passive. Secondly, I associate them with the drug culture. But most of all, the music is just too depressing. It belongs in 1980s East Berlin or at the grave of Karl Marx as opposed to the vibrant white picket fences of Indiana, or Kentucky—the heart of the United States. While certain songs I understand, like “The Wall,” along with the music video from the movie—the front man for the group, Roger Waters, who is part of the British Invasion of that country’s contributions to American music—is a flaming socialist—by his own admission. So I have never liked them as a group. Actually, their music disgusts me, even when I was young and the music was popular. In a race between the suckest bands in history—to me the Grateful Dead and Pink Floyd are engaged in a homosexual coupling at the finish line. In my car at the height of Pink Floyd’s popularity during the 80s there were two things completely off-limits to anyone who rode with me. First, nobody was allowed to smoke. I had very strict rules against smoking. Given that I had one of the nicest cars in my graduating class, people forgave me for it—because they wanted to ride in my car. It was a place to be seen, so people didn’t smoke in my car. Second, Pink Floyd music was not allowed. I was sometimes violently opposed to it because it was so anti-American to me. It did not have the optimism I expected from American culture and I flatly rejected it. In regard to Roger Waters, I despise him as an artist and a human being because he is the face of Pink Floyd.

In that regard I find myself strangely agreeing with Howard Stern whom is another pop culture personality that I’m not a fan of. Regarding Howard, I don’t like his moral position, I don’t like his on-air belching, and I don’t like his sophomoric perversions. But I did like his movie Private Parts and his persistence within the radio industry. Knowing friends in radio who have been through what he has, I can at least respect what he did as a capitalist. Howard Stern may be a lot of bad things, but he is pretty smart and is a product of American capitalism. He stuck to and fought through a lot, so I can at least admire parts of him. But he’s not someone I share many opinions with—except lately when it comes to Roger Waters.

Recently, Stern and Waters have had a very public feud between them over the United States relationship with Israel. Waters is mysteriously anti-Israel—Stern pro Israel—definitely going against the grain within the entertainment industry. If Waters is so angry at Israel and the Jews for living somewhere, then he should be angry at his own country of England for their structuring of the Sykes-Pikot agreement right after World War I. That is what caused all the current mess. The United States was a reluctant participant. Both Stern and Waters are wrong to compare the eradication of Indian populations with the Jews living in Israel against Palestinian will. Jews have to live someplace and they have been driven from every land they inhabited at sometime or another. The Indians were at least given the time of day after they were conquered. The reason for the conquest was out of necessity—but compassion was at least provided to them. They were invited to assimilate into American culture and given a seat at the table through cultural integration. You don’t see Southerners protesting the town of Cherokee, North Carolina because it is largely ran and operated by Indians. Tourists flock to the region and enjoy Indian culture. Nobody is trying to kill them just because they existed or still hold property in America. Americans and Indians worked out their differences and shared the wealth as much as possible, so its time to stop complaining. The two issues are not comparable, Jews and Indians.

The feud has gone on over the last several months largely through progressive publications. Readers here likely didn’t notice the remarks in Salon, or Rolling Stone as the two pop culture icons have fought it out over support of Israel within the left-leaning entertainment sources. Waters even went so far to send an open letter against Bon Jovi for performing in Israel recently—which is how radical his position is. Clearly to me when you understand Middle East politics beyond the Sykes-Pikot agreement the underlining issue to the political right and left regarding Israel is one of support of capitalism over socialism. The Palestinians and much of the radicalization of the Middle East from ISIS to Iran comes from the Iranian Revolution during the 70s where Russian-backed communists overtook the country. The American CIA and other forces tried to off-set the communists with dictators to fight them off and keep the region from forming a communist caliphate using oil to fund another global power directly connected to Russia. The fights in the Middle East were not about oil so much as it was about keeping oil out of communist hands to feed Russian aggression toward the United States during the Cold War. Out of all the areas of the Middle East, really, only Israel has embraced capitalism. Every other region is a dust pit of repressed people broken and poor because of the failures of Marxist philosophies that have been carefully hidden behind radicalized Islamic religion. That is precisely why those on the political left are anti-Israel and anti-American in regard to Middle East involvement. Here is how Rolling Stone reported this issue in a way that the masses can understand.

Roger Waters may not want to “waste a single precious breath on that asshole” after Howard Stern accused the Pink Floyd co-founder of wanting “Jews to go back to the concentration camp,” but on Stern’s radio show this week, the host made it clear he wasn’t going to lay off the subject. “I’m not the only asshole,” Stern said. “I’m just the only asshole brave enough to take him on. For some reason, it’s become very important to Roger to tell artists where to perform. There’s so many countries with histories of abuse and slavery, but he’s very focused on Israel. To me, he comes off like an anti-Semite.”

“Defending Israel isn’t fashionable, I know,” Stern said. “It is a tremendous distraction for Arab leaders to say, ‘Let’s get the Jews, let’s get Israel, it’s all their fault.’ As long as their poor people are focused on Israel they don’t wake up and realize who is stealing their money. Their lives aren’t getting any better from all this crap, so don’t be fooled by Roger and his statements.” Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/howard-stern-on-roger-waters-he-comes-off-like-an-anti-semite-20151105#ixzz3qznpVfDz

If you doubt dear reader what I’ve said about Roger Water’s open support of socialism keep in mind that he currently supports Bernie Sanders for president and he has said so glowingly in that same Rolling Stone magazine, only in a different article. You can read that in the section below along with a link to the source. This is what the front man for Pink Floyd is all about. This is the person you have supported all these years by listening to Pink Floyd music. Isn’t that nice to know?

I just think the term “socialist” freaks a lot of people out.

Socialism is a good thing! What is wrong with socialism? You are the only country that I’ve ever heard of that buses its kids to school in the morning. What is that if not socialist? I am serious! I know nowhere else in the world. Then you go, “What the hell is that about?” “Well, we don’t want our kids to walk through dangerous neighborhoods to get to school, so we send a bus to pick them up at their front door and take them home afterwards.” And you go, “Wow, great.” That is pure socialism, and it is correct.

If you had socialized medicine as well, then we could really start calling you a socialist country. At least you have a better medical system now, thanks to Barack Obama, thanks to the executive branch of this administration that we are now seeing draw to a close. But it’s nothing like the healthcare you get in any of the other 30 major civilized countries in the world. Your healthcare is great if you are very, very, very rich and you have some rare form of cancer. You have the best brain surgeons or whatever in the world, but they service a tiny, tiny proportion of people. But by and large, your healthcare is dreadful, and the cost of it is almost double anywhere else in the world, and you get half the service for it. You know why?

Why? Because it goes to the fucking insurance companies and to the profits of the drug lords and drug companies. It has skimmed off its profit, and it shouldn’t be! Medicine should be provided to all the people, all of the time, for a moderate cost. Of course the drug companies should make moderate profits and of course insurance companies should make moderate profits, but they don’t. They are like loan sharks. They are ripping the heart out of everyone, and they are gouging as hard and fast as they can. That is the world we live in.

That should do it, Roger. Thanks for doing this. You know what you need, don’t you?

What? Socialism!

Ha! Well, it was nice talking to you. Cheers.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/roger-waters-on-the-wall-socialism-and-his-next-concept-album-20151102#ixzz3qzpOBb4i

Could the situation be clearer? Here is a person who has made vast amounts of money selling the same damn album for thirty years to millions of drug induced idiots then he takes that money and the platform provided to him through capitalism and advocates socialism—which is currently crippling Europe economically.

It is because of Roger Waters that I have always hated Pink Floyd—as it was always the product of his radicalism. I hated the movie The Wall—it was not a work of genius the way kids used to think it was—it was a loser’s opinion on a life out-of-control largely because the artist was a victim of socialism and used capitalism to launch his opinion to the world. By the way, Roger Waters is terrified that Donald Trump will become president of the United States—which he talked about in that same interview. That is even more of a reason that I so adamantly support Donald Trump for president—because if he does nothing else, he will make Roger Waters angry—and terrified. An upset member of Pink Floyd is a wonderful thing. They may have legions of fans that grossly outnumber conservatives on this issue, but one million insects really isn’t much of a fight against one large conservative foot.

Listen, America has endured constant attacks by thousands of people like Roger Waters over the years and capitalism has held up, as well as the United States, under really intense scrutiny. Waters is right about school buses picking up kids and taking them to school. Parents should drive their own kids, and parents should have the ability to pick the best school for their kids with open competition. I won’t argue with Waters that our education system is corrupted beyond repair with socialism—vast amounts of it. I’m ready to end it all and rebuild it completely with free market alternatives. But its time for America to stop apologizing to idiots like Roger Waters and his radical leftist friends who need you to smoke a lot of dope to think their music is brilliant, and to advocate the things you like without guilt—such as support for Israel and guns—a very armed public loaded to the teeth with guns, guns and more guns. Because the socialists are out there in just about every mode of entertainment and industry, and they want the fruits of your labor. And they are more open about it now than ever before. It’s time to show them the results of that approach and what it does for them. It’s nice to see Howard Stern doing the right thing. In the case of speaking out against Roger Waters, I am a Howard Stern fan.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Yes there was Life on Other Planets: NASA reveals a truth I told you was coming all along

I’m not writing this for today, but for about twenty years in the future so that I can point back to it and declare how correct I was, before anyone else was ready to admit it. This is not science fiction, or just inflammatory speculation—but a hypothesis based on observed facts, a study of history, mythology, and political tendencies around cultures nurtured through human necessity. Of course I plan to explore this concept in much greater detail in my Curse of Fort Seven Mile stories, but for the sake of future validation, this is to say I told you so. To begin, please consider what Ellen Stofan said early in 2015 about alien life. Ellen is a bleeding heart progressive at NASA, who is a bit of a political advocate on behalf of women and global warming, but she is pretty smart. She loves science and the possibilities of things beyond the orbit of earth. With that I share quite a lot with her. In reaction to her activism on global warming I would tell her to forget the earth and to use space to move humanity to another place. Earth is like that apartment you had in college that is dirty and used up. Its time to build a home in space for mankind—so who cares about global warming. It would only take a sustained solar wind to strip away earth’s atmosphere, as it appeared to have done with Mars, so let’s take our technology and ambition and head for the stars. But first, here’s what Ellen Stofan said:

“I think we’re going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth within a decade, and I think we’re going to have definitive evidence within 20 to 30 years,” NASA chief scientist Ellen Stofan said Tuesday in a live webcast.

 “We know where to look. We know how to look,” Stofan added. “In most cases we have the technology, and we’re on a path to implementing it. And so I think we’re definitely on the road.”

http://www.people.com/article/nasa-predicts-discovery-alien-life

For a long time my family has vacationed at Cape Canaveral and opportunities to speak to NASA employees off the record present themselves at local restaurants and shopping complexes. Most of the time they only know what their classifications allow, but a lot of them look at the stars now with a changing emphasis. Add to that the free market push to commercialize space and the government realization that they can’t keep a lid on the topic any longer is materializing quickly. NASA is a victim of budgets, so they have to ride the line of politics to keep their funding flowing. When Obama announced that NASA should study Islamic contributions to science, of course there was more to the story. NASA stopped going to the moon after the Apollo missions. The space shuttle was cancelled, and the proclamation of returning to the moon by George W. Bush was nixed. Meanwhile rovers have been exploring Mars as the news coverage of those adventures have been scaled back—considerably. The reason is that there is far more than enough evidence discovered in just our infantile attempts to explore space just outside of earth’s atmosphere to confirm that our Biblical history is incomplete. Mankind did not start with Genesis, but with prequels of other stories long since lost.

Evidence of those early chapters are all over the moon and Mars where monuments of achievement similar to Teotihuacán, Ankor Wat, Giza, and many other places seen across the earth are visible to cameras and early space explorers.   On earth there is plenty of commercial development that has occurred that has destroyed much of our pre-Biblical history, and religious radicalism through inquisitions from most major religions have forced millions to deny what their own eyes can see. But on the moon their history was frozen in time. It has not been paved over for a new housing development or destroyed by religious conquistadors, leaving NASA in the precarious position of being an eager gatekeeper stuck between a rock and a hard place. They want to go and study those relics with the cold, emotionless eye of science, while their political funding wants to prevent humanity from the fragile realization that we are not, and never have been, alone. That our religions are but the childhood stories of the true reality—maintaining a grain of truth while leaving out vast amounts of the details.

When the Spanish Inquisition was issued by Pope Sixtus IV on November 1st 1478 the intention was to push out Jewish heretics from the country. The job of the Inquisition was to find such people, torture them until the admitted their crime, then kill them. Columbus found himself in lots of hot water once he discovered America for Europe as the Catholic Church wanted to maintain their control over what Columbus was seeing and keeping their flock from fleeing to shores beyond and learning of events occurring in the outside world—such as that the Chinese were already there and had been trading around the world for many years. The Church wanting to maintain authority over their people had a nice little Inquisition to keep loose tongues quiet and to maintain their control over their region—politically. They wanted people to believe that the world was flat, and that if people strayed too far from the Church and its control, they’d fall off into some hell below. This wasn’t the first Inquisition in history—earth has experienced many of them. The Spanish Inquisition was just one of the more recent ones that successfully destroyed tremendous amounts of archaeology not just in Europe, but in the New World as well, most spectacularly when Henan Cortes and a legion of Tiaxcalan warriors captured the emperor Cuauhtemoc at the city of Tenochtitlan. The Catholic inspired city of Mexico City was built onto top of the ruins of that once great metropolis preventing any real excavation of its history. In present day Iraq and Syria where much of human civilization started as an advanced concept erupting suddenly from the previous hunters and gatherers that we had been—ISIS is running around destroying everything that isn’t historically connected to Islamic faith—which as everyone knows is not all that ancient of a religion. Historically speaking, it has a pretty shallow past and if not for Aristotle, would not exist at all. Historically speaking, Muhammad only founded Islam in the 7th century. Human history likely went on for many thousands of years prior. Possibly because of the Vico Cycle, it may have risen and fallen many times every few thousand years prior—but much of that history has been erased by modern religion.

However, on the moon and likely quite spectacularly all over Mars are untouched relics of the distant past that shows a civilization that was jumping all over the solar system, even to the point of traveling along the arm of the Milky Way galaxy we live in, to other colonized planets. We’ll discover that Mars wasn’t alone, but was to galactic explorers similar to a McDonald’s along our own highways where societies stopped, did their work and moved on. That there were connecting societies in South America directly trading with the Martians and that the Indus Valley was another popular stop. Modern day China is littered with evidence showing a tremendous amount of archaeology that is overgrown and points to a prehistory that is completely uncharted. But nobody is exploring those regions because communism prevents that knowledge from getting out of state controlled governments. Instead they keep the funding cut for further excavations because they don’t want the information getting out to their public. The same could be said in Siberia. Russia was a communist country, now it’s an impoverished one—and they don’t have the extra money for such excavations and since they are a closed country mostly, they won’t allow for foreign permits to do research in their country without strict oversight.

These government inspired control mechanisms to conceal actual human history are prevalent across the earth over all regions. It is clear to me that this is the primary reason that NASA stopped going to the moon. And it’s also why delays to Mars have persisted so long. I have noticed that all global governments are supporting the progressive push toward non-religion—whether they pit Muslims against Christians, or Muslims against Jews, or Buddhists against secularists—the intent is to get each to destroy each other and keep the minds of mankind illiterate to the truth, and to assimilate the youth into more of a secular view which government then controls. Only then will governments be comfortable in humanity learning the truth of what’s always been out there—because eventually we will find out. They already know. So far its just relics from the past, half covered by soil, but it won’t be long before the full story gets out and we directly connect those societies to the myths and legends of our own ancient past and learn that they were more rooted in truth than fiction.

The sum of all this surmising is that it will be soon confirmed that earth is not our origin of birth. Our religions do not help us understand that relationship and our governments have been constructed by our religions to keep the book closed on the topic. But science has advanced far enough to let us peek just a bit at the pages inside. And within a few short years the book will have to open by necessity and at least the American government knows that the inevitable is about to occur. They will have to break the story officially very soon to the public, and when they do a major crises will unfold across civilization—history books will have to be re-written, religions will have to cope, and humanity will have to come to some uncomfortable terms with itself. It’s not that we will find life on other planets or the evidence of it that will be the breaking point—it will be that we will have found our long-lost selves in the process. We are already out there—and always have been. The evidence is sitting right there in full view of a powerful telescope.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Joe Crachiolo’s Cat Snowball: Why he was wrong to suspend a six-year-old for playing a hero

It’s been about five days and I think my temper has calmed down enough to talk about this activist liberal at the Lady of Lourdes elementary school in Cincinnati, Ohio. Claiming to have a zero policy toward violence, imitated or otherwise, principal Joe Crachiolo over reacted to a 6-year-old pretending to be a Power Ranger at recess with a pretend bow and arrow shooting another kid during play. The suspension lasted three days and is in effect as of this writing. The parents, obviously better than the average public school participant because they cared enough about their school to send their child to something other than a public school—which is far worse than Lady of Lourdes—took an active role in defending their child from the progressive activism of Crachiolo.

Now, I know Crachiolo has a cat named Snowball, so he’s seen that animal as a kitten play with yarn—or mock hunt a piece of paper from a gift wrap. Hunting and defending oneself is part of every living things most primal instinct. What the young Miele boy was doing was perfectly normal and should be encouraged. Yet Crachiolo decided to accept the modern passive stance in favor of collectivism and radically impose on a first grade child something he obviously knows nothing about. Crachiolo’s concept of a valiant human being is one embodying passivism that does what they are told. The young boy from the Miele family wants to be a hero, where the individual helps society from the benefit of personal decisions and aggressive action. That’s what such young children are pretending to be when they play aggressively from the vantage point of a hero.

I share in common with Crachiolo a love of Disney World. For a time he taught 7th and 8th grade religion and social studies at Mother Teresa Catholic Elementary in West Chester—so he can’t be all bad. He grew up in Loveland and graduated from St. Columban. He also went to Moeller and studied at U.C. and Northern Kentucky University. Apparently he and his wife only have a cat in their family named Snowball, as they have not had the opportunity to test themselves as parents actually raising a child through the furnace of reality. Joe instead had done the next best thing after receiving a lifetime of progressive education in primarily religious institutions—he has taught young people. But at the end of the day, unlike the parents of the Miele boy, he goes home to his wife and his cat with his hands clean of the actual responsibility of raising a child.

Abusing his power as a principal at Lady of Lourdes elementary school hoping to cash in on some brownie points as a defender of violence so prevalent these days in schools of all kinds—as society has lost it’s values and is turning toward death and destruction as a by-product of mismanaged lives—Joe is trying to destroy in children their innate need to defend themselves. What Joe is attempting to do to the Miele child is equivalent to de-clawing his cat Snowball after raising it from a baby to be fed every day in the luxury of their home then suddenly dropping it off in the woods to fend for itself from other cats, raccoons, and coyotes and expecting that cat to live through the night. These modern educators at virtually every level have been taught incorrectly how to prepare children for a world they know nothing about. They live in a bubble of academia that has been shaped by progressive sentiment, and they are destroying entire generations of young Americans in just this very way.

In spite of educator’s efforts to “manage” society away from violence through either religion, or institutions of learning, all they have achieved is the weakening of valor among our otherwise gifted youth leaving them like that example of Snowball de-clawed and helpless in the woods at night to hunt for itself in a world wanting to eat it. Snowball wouldn’t last two hours in a hostile environment, unable to hunt for its own food because it had no claws, or defend itself from other predators. Joe and similar educators are attempting to do that same thing to our youth by taking away the weapons of their minds and altering them to be nice pets that do what they are told by a society who manages their lives.

Like most educators Joe Crachiolo gets to live through other people’s children. The parents of the kids he teaches take all the responsibility for actually raising the children. Joe just sits on an intellectual pedestal untested in reality like his cat Snowball and pretends to be an authority on what’s best. By teaching he gets to give himself the illusion of shaping the minds of young people, but without the burden of having the responsibility of actually doing it. People like Joe—who list their cats as actual family members—have very little understanding of what it takes to raise a child outside of an education institution. Within that world of religion and intellectual Starbucks philosophizing—he may be a hero for attempting to de-claw a child from pretending to be a hero at recess—but in the world outside of institutionalism—he is just another vile activist destroying our American children.

I’m proud of the Miele parents for standing up for their son in the face of so much national attention. It is embarrassing that such a thing is actually happening in Cincinnati. You might expect it in liberal cesspools such as San Francisco and New York, but not in Cincinnati. But the mood of instruction most taught these days to our youth is this de-clawing method of breaking down children into a kind of mush for public consumption—wealth-redistribution, social justice, and all the trappings of the Pharisees who prosecuted the defenseless Jesus Christ. Turn society into the weak and meek so that they can give people like Joe and his cat Snowball a seat at the table of valor—without having a cell in their body behold the value. When we allow overly educated activists to destroy the values our children need to have to live in a capitalist society, then we have crippled those young minds for no reason but to bridge over the insecurities of intelligentsia. The real motive has always been to de-claw children starting with their minds with the hope that our capitalist society would fail leaving nobody able to act aggressively against anyone else. But what they’ve done in the process is destroy the essence of what it means to be a human being.

The world needs more heroes not less of them. I commend the young six-year-old in playing Power Rangers. He’d fit in well around my house where I openly play shoot em’ up with my grandson quite a lot. Good luck in stopping that—a lot of people have tried. Activists know what happens when they sneak around my house looking for ill intentions of submission and blind compliance.   They don’t get close to what they came for—quite the opposite. I think every child in the world should be required to play cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, or Power Rangers, whatever invokes in them the spark of learning self-defense so when they are confronted at some future time with actual violence, they know what to do.

Further people like Joe Crachiolo should be required to carry a gun otherwise they would be unqualified to manage a large contingent of youth gathered under his care. If a bad guy came into that school, it would be his job to eliminate that threat, not sitting in his office planning his next Disney vacation. Anyone who loves Disney World, especially the Frontierland understands that Uncle Walt fully intended that Americans not forget about their past in fighting for their freedom. In Frontierland, playing with guns is something the place naturally invokes. Modern progressive management at Disney World may think as Joe does, that violence needs to be eradicated from our society with a gradual emphasis away from such tasks and on to more intellectual pursuits. But they’d be wrong—of course. All they are really doing is de-clawing children needlessly and to their own future demise. Just ask Joe’s cat Snowball. I doubt that poor animal could hold its own against a wild raccoon. And in the future, neither will the children taught under Joe’s care. When they fail, it will be his fault and many people like him.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Confirmation of what I’ve said about Modern Education: A six-year-old suspended for being a normal boy

This story made me so angry when I heard it that it’s taken me a few days to calm down about it. But it has made national news. Of course there will be a lot more on this story to come. Here is how the New York Daily News reported the issue.

 

A 6-year-old Ohio boy was suspended from school for three days after being spotted shooting an imaginary bow and arrow.

The boy was sent to the principal’s office for engaging in make-believe marksmanship during recess at Our Lady Of Lourdes Catholic in Westwood, Cincinnati.

Now, his dad Matthew Miele has slammed the school, who insist they have a zero-tolerance policy to any threatening gestures.

“I don’t see anything wrong with the way he was playing, ” Miele told WCPO News.

He notes that his son has never had a problem with discipline.

“The punishment is so severe that it’s hard, as a parent, to make this a teachable moment for our kid so that we can move forward.”

The school’s principal Joe Crachiolo was alerted to the incident after a teacher spotted him pretending to be a Power Ranger as he was playing outside with friends.

The parents say they encourage their son to use his imagination as much as possible, and are frustrated that their pleas for their son’s suspension to be reconsidered fell on deaf ears.

“I didn’t really understand,” said mom Martha, who spoke to Crachiolo after the punishment was handed down.

“My question to him was ‘Is this really necessary? Does this really need to be a three-day suspension under the circumstances that he was playing and he’s 6 years old?’ “

In a letter to parents, Crachiolo said the school has no tolerance for “any real, pretend or imitated violence.”

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/schoolboy-6-suspended-shooting-imaginary-bow-arrow-article-1.2424301

It is simply disgraceful. Testimony to all the negatives I have stated about modern education practices. The warnings have now manifested into reality.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Rodizio at Lunch in Liberty Center: Only $19.99 and defining the Metaphysics of Quality

It might be because I believe that advanced civilizations first erupted in South America a long time ago that I find the Rodizio at Liberty Center, Ohio so enchanting, but I love the place. It has become a personal refuge for me of late because I love the atmosphere, the enthusiasm, and the food—and I love the location. I previously wrote about a VIP night that I was a part of which can be seen by clicking here. But that was at night where the price per person was $33 dollars for the all you can eat full Rodizio experience—where they bring skewers of meat to your table in a very theatrical way and you eat as much as you want or can. Well, I wanted to try it out for lunch so I brought some people important to me to the place to see if the lunch was as magical as the dinner—and sure enough it was.

The night before I watched the very exciting Battle of Ohio at Paul Brown Stadium where the Bengals continued to have an impressive season. It was Thursday Night Football and the nation was watching. The night was long and the crowd was rowdy, but it was enchanting to watch the game from the Club section with the same demographic type of people who will enjoy the new Liberty Center. However, once the game was over, I shared with tens of thousands of other people a strong desire to get back to our cars and get on the road—which clogged up I-75 all the way back to West Chester. The highway really didn’t begin to move until we moved north passed the I-275 bridge. We were all going home from the Bengal game to the same place. It was well passed midnight and we just wanted to get to our beds. That was a persistent thought that I had all evening during the football game. Take away the Bengals, the Reds, the museum and an occasional theater play and there isn’t much that downtown Cincinnati has to offer. Sure they have nice dinner options, but downtown is such a pain in the neck to travel around. For the people who can afford it, such as the people in the Club section at the Bengal game, once the fun was over, they wanted to get back to their homes—north of Cincinnati in the suburbs of West Chester, Liberty Township and Mason.

For years I have enjoyed going downtown for the exotic experiences that you can have there, but have more than once been dismayed at how trashy it was. For instance, when you’re walking around with your date in front of Fountain Square with the Westin Hotel in the background, you want to enjoy the luxury and options of the setting, but then some dude walks by with his pants half down cursing up a storm looking like he just crawled out of the gutter—which most of the time he has, it tends to alter an otherwise good mood. You may have just spent $400 at Ruby’s Steakhouse and had an otherwise nice time until something like that happens. Cincinnati, because of the environment they’ve allowed to percolate just wasted your money on the experience you were trying to have. At the Bengal game, money flowed better so long as there was a set-up that allowed people who wanted to enjoy the game without a lot of ruckus to do so with a pretty decent guarantee that the exchange would be worth it. Those same people didn’t want to spend much time not getting to their car and were eager to get back to friendlier territory as soon as the drama of the game was done. So much of the imagery shown on the television of the downtown cityscape was an illusion, it wasn’t real. Downtown was dead because the people best able to support it wanted to get as far away as possible once it came down to putting money on the table for a nice evening. Snobby, sure it is and there is nothing wrong with that. People of value enjoy association with other people of value. If other people don’t share those values, then there will be tension, and in this day and age where political correctness is choking off our opinions, people vote with their wallets.

That brings us back to the wonderful Liberty Center downtown that is privately managed by the Steiner group which essentially gives people the Club option of shopping and dining. It has the same appeal as going to an NFL game in the Club and Box seats—it puts everything on a pedestal, keeps the riff raff at bay, and ensures that the money you spend will be worth as much as possible. And so far, I have discovered that the Rodizio is the best value of all those elements. It’s just a top class place—it reminds me of the type of place you’d find in South America without the language barriers, the sweaty hotels with half working air conditioning units, and the modern socialism that is crippling their current economy. When I walk into Rodizio each time, I think of the ancient cultures which seeded planet earth well before any established religion laid claim to history. There is an ancient truth to the place that first appealed to me. Now I find it sustaining to attend their salad bar which is only $12.99 for lunch including all the hot dishes, and pick from some very healthy selections of food prepared by a kitchen staff that really cares. But for lunch at only $19.99 you can have the whole Rodizio experience which is a business lunch bargain. So I had to try it out with those thoughts of the Bengal game fresh on my mind.

Yes Captain Hook was there and he personally cared for our table. We were very happy and the management at the Rodizio made it a very memorable experience.  Our waitress, Crystal was exceptionally professional and poured a lot of passion into our experience.  I had stated previously that I considered Rodizio a great business lunch option and it has certainly lived up to that assessment. This wasn’t a VIP evening, this was an actual business day in what I consider paradise—a well managed downtown where I don’t have to worry about my car, or nasty people ruining my investment dollars with degradation.  To say anything less would be dishonest just for the stylishness of being politically correct. Thus far, I don’t have to worry about wasting money at Liberty Center or Rodizio. If you are taking clients or associates out to lunch to impress them, you need the whole experience, the food, the atmosphere, the people—everything that your senses perceive. It all has to work or really you are just wasting your money.

The Rodizio crew understands that investment which is why I am so glowingly supportive of them. If Liberty Center were the kind of shopping destination that John Galt would have built from the novel Atlas Shrugged, then Rodizio is one of the unique places that would belong on the pages of that classic story for all the right reasons within it. It’s better than reality, which is what I feel each time I visit the Rodizio Grill. They do a good job of caring for their customers with an experience that is better than the reality of the outside world—the world beyond the parking lot of Liberty Center.

It’s not being snobby to enjoy nice things. For me it’s all about the Metaphysics of Quality. I love a quality experience and when variables create mundane results, I often resent whatever investment I’ve put into the endeavor—whether that may by time, money, or emotion. I don’t like to waste resources—so if I do something, I like to see a return on that investment in a quality experience. When I get that I do enjoying talking about it. There is nothing wrong with setting the bar high for yourself. There is nothing wrong with playing above your head, because it can make you a better person. And there is nothing wrong with eating the best food that you can for the best price in the best place. At Rodizio Grill at Liberty Center, quality is what the experience is all about. And with that, I’m pleased to report that they are the real deal, not just a flash in the pan. If you are looking for a good place to grab lunch, they should be at the top of your list.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Opinions of a Pothead: What they see in the mirror

In the 24 hours before the Election of 2015 this site had several thousand hits just on political issues ranging from Lakota school board candidates, Fairfield tax issues, and of course Issue 3—the pot legalization in Ohio. It was a little sad because many of those articles have been out there in cyberspace for weeks, but people were too consumed with other thoughts to pay attention—until right before the election. It was like a bunch of stupid college kids partying all week-long then the night before a big test cramming for it like a bunch of idiots taking caffeine pills to stay awake. The moment the test was over they were right back to their original stupidity getting drunk in the local bar and partying it up like it was the end of the world. Of course of those there were late comers who noticed I had very strong opinions against pot legalization in Ohio and left me comments. Some of them sounded like the idiot diatribes of a dog that had just consumed its own feces—incoherent and obviously had their brains destroyed by sustained marijuana use over time. But some were like that of the guy below. I don’t agree with this guy on much of anything, but at least he strung together a few sentences that could generate discussion.   Here is what he said:

JLeno thetonightshow.comx mrmeeseeks420@hotmail.com 83.32.44.167

JLeno thetonightshow.com mrmeeseeks420@hotmail.com 83.32.44.167

Submitted on 2015/11/02 at 10:25 pm

I think it’s great that you have your own opinion and are expressing it and all, but why don’t you present any solid info to back up your hatred? I got the impression that the whole article was just you stating your dislike of pot and the people who smoke it without providing any real evidence. You say that people aren’t really living their lives because they smoke a mind altering substance but have you ever considered that weed actually helps people to approach subjects from a different angle and offer a different take on things. Before I smoked weed, I lacked empathy and was very closed-minded. Since then, I’ve gained a new perspective that has allowed me to admit that I am wrong and take other people’s feelings into account, apparently unlike you who seems to just go around hating on a group of people who never hurt anybody. I don’t know what has to happen in a guy’s life to make him so resentful towards such a small thing that has proven time and time again to be less harmful (and more beneficial) than many legal drugs (such as caffeine and alcohol). I know you’ll probably disregard this because I’m a “filthy pothead” but I really don’t think your hatred of people who decide to ingest a natural substance is fair.

People advocating pot use always attack the amount of evidence presented in making an argument against it. I did present plenty of arguments in my article against Issue 3, but explaining it to a stoner is like trying to tell a person suffering from Alzheimer’s where their car keys is. You can show it to them on the kitchen table and they’ll act like they heard what you said, but two hours later they won’t remember anything you said, because their short-term memory centers in their brain has been destroyed and they can’t remember anything that happened five minutes ago. They can remember things that happened decades ago, but not things that happened that day because long-term memories are stored in a different part of the brain. Short term memory is one of the first things to go and pot heads have that in common with Alzheimer’s patients. I make that statement based on my own comparison, not some doctor who is behind Issue 3 and threw their name behind a study to the contrary so that they can get into the business of prescribing it to their patients.   I see nothing good about marijuana use in any fashion and I’m against it for every reason—pain relief, social bonding, even as a material for making rope.

The next things these stoner types attack is the uptightness of the typical “conservative.” Their assertion is that if only we’d get stoned with them that we might “mellow out” and see the world from a different perspective. No, marijuana is a mind altering substance. If it helps users see the world differently it’s because it changes the way a human brain thinks rationally about something. Losing rationality is not a beneficial attribute to the human condition or the maintenance of a republic. Lacking empathy is not a bad thing when people of value are surrounded by people who lack values. Being empathetic toward other human beings is not an admirable trait if the person receiving the empathy is a scum bag. Empathy is not a value if the sum of the scum exceeds what a viable society can withstand without collapsing. Ten scum bags and one person of value is not a good ratio and pot makes too many scum bags and not enough people of value tipping the scales of value toward the scum bag leading to a declining civilization. Being “mellowed out” while all this is going on makes you a pussy, not a valued citizen.

Pot heads often refer to people like me as being “closed-minded.” I consider that a compliment. Having an open mind is not necessarily a good thing when there are people within collective organizations that want to impose on you their values and expect you to assimilate to their shared beliefs—which may or may not be good. My mind is impervious to hypnotism, scary dreams—I don’t have them, or suggestions under coercion—such as threats of violence, torture, social manipulation or other mechanisms of tyranny against the individual. To those who want to penetrate that mind to inject their values, they will prescribe that my mind is closed—which it is–for the same reason that I lock the doors to my house or car—because I don’t want easy access to the contents within from those without. I don’t want just anybody inside my property and I feel even stronger about the contents of my mind—so it’s not open to others for manipulation. I like my mind and I protect it from those who want to damage it. For that reason I don’t get drunk and I don’t do drugs. And I don’t let doctors give me a lot of mindless prescriptions. Most of the time I completely ignore a doctor’s advice if they are recommending a prescription—because I don’t want a foreign substance influencing my thoughts. Would I be more fun to “party” with if I did drugs—sure—but that is not a valuable trait. So I’ll remain closed minded for the same reason that I lock the doors to my car—because I don’t want hippie scum bags and rotten bastards molesting my property. My mind is my property and I will continue to protect it.

What that commenter is saying about himself, which speaks true of everyone who falls for the pot lure—which is most people reading this article is that he’s a conquered person. Out of every 10,000 people there is typically only one person who feels about it the way I do. Even religious fanatics typically have a background with the drug. They only speak against drugs as born again Christians—but at some point in their past they tried pot, likely as a high school kid, probably in college, or in other social gatherings. They disgust me too. For me there is no wiggle room on the issue. People who have taken the drug have allowed themselves to be conquered by its lure and in most cases that is irredeemable. I know a lot of people who have used pot, and I do grow to like them occasionally. But it always tells me that they were at some point in time weak people and that is something I will never respect. They can say that my mind is closed—that I’m a conservative hater. But what they are really mad at is the reflection in the mirror. They surrendered their mind to a conscious altering substance, and they can never again claim to have the sanctity of an original thought. And that makes them feel guilty even when they are surrounded by several million other idiots who have traveled down the same path.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Issue 3 Fails in Ohio: Now, reload for the next round–because they will try again and again like stoned idiots

Looks like Ohio has defended itself from the pot smoking scum bags for at least another year.  But get ready, the joint craving lunatics of the lazy youth will be back for another round of tradition destroying endeavor by progressive activists.  Interesting reactions by the general public, seen below as the results came in.

 

State Issue 3

Issue 3 permits commercial production and sale of marijuana by what amounts to a monopoly in 10 locations around the state, It allows individuals to grow limited amounts for personal use. (read more)

YES 478,815
NO 908,431

60

60 comments
Post comment as…

 

Mousey

Mousey2 minutes ago

We all know the corruption never ends in Ohio – it’s where it starts. Talk about monopolies..get a grip folks

e2450just now

It’s a shame the amendment wasn’t structured differently. Clearly, at a minimum, medical use should be permitted. Ohio had a chance to be ahead of the curve for once. There goes that.

Chalmette02

Chalmette023 minutes ago

Soooooooo not to point out the obvious but didn’t you guys just outlaw monopolies? Anyone know of any electric companies with no competition in your area?

Did Republicans really just think that was a good idea just to stop weed?

Aggrieved_by_CleClowns

Aggrieved_by_CleClownsjust now

@Chalmette02  I hear what you’re saying, and respect it. I really didn’t want to have to vote Yes on Issue 2. It was promulgated by the GOP in the Ohio legislature, which I don’t trust … however, it was the ONLY way I could see ensuring that Ian James and his Irresponsible “We Feel the Need for Greed with Weed” crowd from bringing back Issue 3 over and over again — until it passed. Sometimes, you have to choose the lesser of two evils — HEY!!!! I do that in every PRESIDENTIAL election! Who knew?!

ClevelandTchotchke

ClevelandTchotchke5 minutes ago

So far, so good!  Ohioans are proving that they are smarter than Ian James, John Pardee, their carpetbagging buddies, and their cronies!  Ohio may legalize, but it will NOT be with monopolization for fat cats to make money off Ohioans, and ship it back to their ivory towers!

THE CLOCK STRUCK TWELVE!   THE MONOPOLY IS LOSING!

What a great day it is to be an Ohioan!  ISSUE 3?  GTFOH!

david

david7 minutes ago

Ohio is the worst f****** place to live I f****** hate this place nothing but f****** idiots

BlingFingers

BlingFingers6 minutes ago

@david

hahahahah

LEAVE NOW Dopey

Chalmette02

Chalmette028 minutes ago

Expect to see a few people leave the state who have kids who need medical marijuana. Ohio is a strange place.

ultra51

ultra517 minutes ago

@Chalmette02 If these kids “really” needed it, you’d figure they’d already be gone.  If they “really” needed it.

Aggrieved_by_CleClowns

Aggrieved_by_CleClowns5 minutes ago

@Chalmette02  I do feel for those who want to use medical marijuana to relieve severe pain including terminal illness … but you have to understand, IrresponsibleOhio’s greed grab of a monopolistic pot plan — leaving my entire Southeast Ohio region out of the pot “mix” when we po’ folk need the jobs down here! — alienated A LOT of voters. You have no one but IrresponsibleOhio to blame. Its celebrity greedy weed grab crowd could not be trusted and it showed in the polls – BIGTIME.

Aggrieved_by_CleClowns

Aggrieved_by_CleClowns9 minutes ago

Today is like going to McDonald’s  — “I’m LOvin’ iT!” on these Issue 1, 2, 3 results!!!! IrresponsibleOhio lost on BOTH Issue 2 and 3 — the voters HAVE SPOKEN, so take your taxpayer-funded lawsuit idea, Ian, and go live in ANOTHER state where Monopolies can”take root.” And take weird hermaphrodie Buddie with you!

david

david10 minutes ago

Ohio is a terrible state

Aggrieved_by_CleClowns

Aggrieved_by_CleClowns8 minutes ago

@david  Then move to Chokelahoma, or wherever you and your favorite cartel can go along to get along! Pal

Saganhawking

Saganhawking7 minutes ago

I’m having trouble understanding what you just posted. It was funny though. Am I supposed to agree or disagree with what you just said?

Aggrieved_by_CleClowns

Aggrieved_by_CleClowns3 minutes ago

@Saganhawking  Agree if you believe in free markets and the right to a responsible free market weed plan — let the best cultivator win — let it be about who GROWS THE BEST WEED — We down here beside Meigs Gold will win — and YOU should have the right to buy it without a cartel interfering!

david

david14 minutes ago

Well i can say Ohio is a terrible place to live

Saganhawking

Saganhawking10 minutes ago

Yuep, horrible place to live. I hear Colorado, Washington and California calling your name. It’s a free country, go for it. The doors are open to you. Now write legislation concerning weed here in Ohio we can all agree to and maybe more would vote for it…

BlingFingers

BlingFingers19 minutes ago

well the Cleveland.com poll sure was off this year wasng it.

marijuana got its leaf kicked.

way to go people, send the pot smokers back to Colorado so they can drive while impaired elsewhere. we don’t need pot smokers here

Syphon

Syphon16 minutes ago

You don’t live in this world apparently. You must have no idea how many people that are driving around are high. Go into a convenience store and count the amount of people that walk in there buying blunt wraps. I don’t smoke. I just know the real world.

avex11

avex1110 minutes ago

@BlingFingers There will be plenty of pot smokers here as there always has been. I guess most people here still favor a nanny state.

http://www.cleveland.com/election-results/index.ssf/2015/11/statewide_results_for_ohio_iss.html

 

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

 

Robert Tracinski, Rich Hoffman and Matt Clark on WAAM: Why ‘Star Wars’ is better than ‘Star Trek’

Matt Clark had me on his show to actually co-host with him as we spoke to Robert Tracinski who writes for The Federalist. He had written an interesting article about how it was unlikely that J.J. Abrams could screw up the new Star Wars film, The Force Awakens, so long as he stuck with the formula. There were some condescending aspects to Tracisnski’s article which I was willing to overlook, because he was right about a lot of things. But more than anything Tracisnski had been dismissive of the original trilogy as not being very good—which I thought was odd. So I was eager to talk to him. It only took a few moments into the interview however to learn the root of his issues—he was a Star Trek fan and had only come to Star Wars through his children. His position was that Star Trek was philosophically superior to Star Wars and that these new movies were kid stuff that he was enjoying with his children. Listen to that interview here:

I don’t care much for Star Trek, to me it is the United Nations in space. While Robert Tracinski is not a liberal and is a pretty committed Objectivist, which is Ayn Rand’s philosophy—it was clear to me quickly why Robert didn’t like Star Wars much in his article. I disagree with him on a number of topics regarding the formula of Star Wars, or its appeal. I think the Star Wars films are deeply philosophical; especially The Empire Strikes Back—much more so than Star Trek. I mean, people are not lining up across the world to see the latest Star Trek movie, and Star Wars isn’t as popular as it is because it’s just adults living out their childhoods once again through a movie. It’s more complicated than that. As we were talking to Tracinski, because of his background with Ayn Rand I kept wondering if I had met him someplace before, so I wanted to cut him some slack. Everyone comes to things in their own time and if he came to Star Wars late in life through his kids—so be it. One aspect that Tracinski got right in his article was the perception that Han Solo is the key to the franchise—so I stuck to that topic in our conversation.

Matt and I spent the first segment of his Saturday WAAM show talking about Disney and their progressive activism with a gentle warning about messing with the formula of Star Wars and the impact that might have on their massive investment. Matt and I love Disney—the Uncle Walt version. I love that Disney is a family friendly entertainment group—so I am willing to overlook a little of their liberal activism. Something that Robert Tracinski did bring up on his show that was true.  George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were the best conservative filmmakers coming out of the 80s. I personally think they were both seduced by Bill Clinton in the 90s and have lost their minds since. The reason their early films were so successful was because they all had conservative leanings to them. Once both directors had achieved their monstrous success and essentially stepped away from the Objectivist roots of their film careers, their movies started making a lot less money. Without question George Lucas was at least attracted to Ayn Rand in his early days—when she was at the height of her influence—and Han Solo was a character that represented that struggle within George. As he become more liberal with age and success—perhaps feeling a little guilty that all his liberal employees were constantly berating him for his capitalist tendencies, he softened up on his stance for individualism and began to accept collectivism to a much higher degree, which was clearly represented in the prequel  films—which were noticeably absent of the Han Solo type of character.

Where I disagree with Tracinski about the prequel films is that I don’t think George Lucas ever intended those films to be successes. They were dark movies about the failure of a Republic—and have great political merit to them. They are very philosophical from the position of how poorly constructed philosophies can destroy a body of government. Even though Lucas had been moving to the left—politically, his message about the failure of groups to detect evil, and how institutional failure is indicative of all government cycles is powerful stuff that set the stage for some pretty deep storytelling. As much as people dismiss the prequel films as silly, they are important in the larger scope of the intended message. The movies did lack heroics on the scale of a Han Solo, but that was on purpose. A lot of characters including Yoda and Obi-wan Kenobi made mistakes that they spent the rest of their lives correcting. So the films were never supposed to be heroic repeats of the original trilogy. For that story Han Solo was the savior, he kept Luke alive, married his sister Leia and that set up the events of these new films. Solo is an Ayn Rand character and Disney even with all their activism against conservative causes—can’t ignore that the magic of Star Wars isn’t Luke Skywalker, or anything about the Force—it’s about Han Solo’s position against hooky religions and ancient weapons not being as competent as a good blaster at your side.

Just a few days before Matt and I had our radio show together Harrison Ford was on with Jimmy Kimmel dressed up for Halloween as a hot dog. It was a funny segment and of course Ford was asked about the new Star Wars film. I thought his comments were interesting to say the least. He stated that nobody would be disappointed—at all. That was a remarkable statement considering what’s at stake. He knows the potential cost of over-anticipated hype—so his comments had me very curious in relation to Disney’s strategy going forward. Han Solo is going to be playing a larger role in Star Wars than he has in the past largely because the character tests well demographically. His children will without question be the subject of the new stories but Disney will find every opportunity to insert a younger Han Solo into the movies at every juncture. To be successful at that, Disney will have no choice but to adopt the obvious aspects of Han Solo’s Objectivism view points—his natural conservatism and love of capitalist endeavors if they want Star Wars to continue being successful.

After Matt’s show I spent time at my children’s house going trick or treating with my grandkids—and kids. Late into the night my oldest daughter and I spent time talking about Han Solo and how it seems obvious now that Disney will find a way to put him in the stand alone films as much as possible just to use him as a springboard to success. Like Robert Tracinski and I spoke about on Matt’s show, without Han Solo, I think the Star Wars saga crashes and burns. If they try to turn him into a sacrificial collectivist Disney will lose a lot of money because people will reject the premise. The ticket buying public will only accept the Objectivist Han Solo—and nothing less—the hero who acts in his own self-interest. Even though the moment at the end of A New Hope was intended to show that Solo was able to act for others, the need to save Luke at the last moment was out of Solo’s self-interest because he was starting to like the kid. Like I said, Star Wars is a lot more philosophical than people give it credit for, and I’d think that as much as Tracinski likes Ayn Rand, that he’d prefer Star Wars over the United Nations in space—Star Trek and all that “needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” crap. Screw Spock and his pointy ears—he’s a damn collectivist. Solo is a rugged, gun slinging individualist who acts out of his own self-interest. That’s why Star Wars is better than Star Trek.

We’ll see what happens, time will tell. It was a good conversation that was worth listening to, especially given what Star Wars will mean when it opens in a few weeks. There will be no escape; the opening of The Force Awakens will impact just about everyone no matter where they live. It will be impossible to not notice something about it as the merchandising around Christmas will be everywhere. Just watch the Duracell commercial shown above. Star Wars will literally be everywhere in just a few weeks of this writing. There will be nothing like it ever—history is being made both commercially and philosophically. The question will be whether or not The Force Awakens will be as anticipated on the 19th of December as it was on the 18th after people start seeing the movie. To be as successful as Disney needs it to be people will need to see the film several times. And to have that kind of power over the mind of fans—Han Solo will have to be a part of it with an Objectivist approach—otherwise the whole thing falls apart. It’s not the lightsaber battles and space antics that make Star Wars so great—it’s the Objectivist leanings of its basic premise:

Han Solo—“marching into the detention area is not what I had in mind.”

Luke Skywalker—“but she’s rich.”

Han Solo—“How rich?”

Luke Skywalker—“More wealth than you can imagine.”

Han Solo—“I don’t know, I can imagine quite a bit.”

Luke Skywalker—“you’ll get it.”

Han Solo—“I better!”

Luke Skywalker—“You will!”

Han Solo—“Alright kid, what’s your plan?”

That’s Star Wars—it’s an Objectivist love fest designed before George Lucas was overly liberalized. It’s also why twice during the broadcast with Matt that I uttered to his millions and millions of listeners—“Han shot first!” When Lucas changed Star Wars in 1997 to have the bounty hunter Greedo shoot at Han first in the Mos Eisley cantina fans were angry. It was a liberalized mistake for Lucas to cave under the pressure from the liberal film community to make Han Solo not appear as such a blood thirsty killer. But Solo acting out of self-interest shot first because that is the nature of his character—he’s an Ayn Rand survivalist and the heart of what makes Star Wars great.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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The Best Thing About ‘The Force Awakens’: John Williams

Matt Clark and I over the weekend did a rather important show about the new Star Wars picture and the radicalism of Disney from its employees based on an article I wrote several weeks ago. You will be able to listen to that broadcast on WAAM radio soon. However, Matt had on a guest that was late to the call at the bottom of the hour and needed to fill some time while his producer got him on the phone. So we had to come up with a bit of off-script content to bridge the gap. I brought up something I had been thinking about a lot in anticipation of the new Force Awakens Star Wars film based on persistent fears that the expectations were just so high. There was a real danger of walking away disappointed. I realized after a lot of thought that the primary reason I was looking forward to the new Star Wars film was for one simple reason—I want to hear new Star Wars music from John Williams. Everything else is literally secondary. To understand why, watch this old 20/20 segment about John Williams from 1983.

I was a strange kid—which should have been assumed based on a casual reading of my millions and millions of words. There are a lot of people who get paid decent amounts of money for writing far less than I do about far, far fewer topics. Yet I know that I have to write otherwise my head would explode with too many thoughts. I have too many hobbies, too many passions, too many philosophical quandaries that reside at the root of politics that if I don’t get them out and onto some kind of page to look at I may well explode with enthusiasm. So I have to write because I opened the door to something when I was very young that I have never closed. I only wanted to be one thing when I grew up—but I was caught between two worlds really. There was no other job that I wanted to be involved with than a director of movies. The trouble was I also had a pretty powerful physical aptitude. Creative types tend to enjoy escaping from reality and creating what they do in a vacuum of contemplation—whereas I didn’t. I wanted to be in the thick of reality at all times, which flew in the face of the film industry. But at age 13 in 1983 when that 20/20 episode came out on John Williams I wanted to be a film director so that I could work with people like him. What I learned eventually, and much later that there really isn’t anyone like John Williams, the great composer and conductor for some of the most powerful and important movies our American culture has ever produced. So that 20/20 episode was very important to me—I watched it over and over again on a new device called a VHS video tape. I had recorded it and showed it to every member of my family whenever there was some gathering trying to share with them the passion I felt for John Williams music. Most of them didn’t understand.

John Williams is the most important musical personality of the millennia—more so than Beethoven, Mozart, Bach or anybody else. Many years later as I worked at Cincinnati Milicron in Oakley, just north of downtown Cincinnati I listened to all those composers religiously on NPR radio while I worked as a tear-down person for rebuilt machine lathes. The other workers had a typical unionized approach to work, they watched the break clock closely—paced out their day making sure not to produce too much too quickly, and they listened to a lot of classic rock. I wasn’t adverse to rock and roll—there is a certain magic to it blaring from a radio in a machine shop—a freedom that is healthy and defiant in all the right ways—but its not very intellectual. Rock music is very linier—which has never been something I was interested in—rock music equals a can of beer resulting in unstable personal relationships. I enjoyed it for its ambiance, not for the lifestyles that draped off it—the limited vision of the world and lack-luster ambition typical of its fans. So I listened to my radio tuned to NPR’s classical station in Cincinnati and listened to the greats for hours on end while I worked. I was the only one who did this within the entire facility which eventually was dismantled and is now covered by the upgraded development occurring around the Rockwood shopping complex. I have always thought that if more people listened to that classical station with me that the employees would have been smart enough to see the writing on the wall years ago, and Cincinnati Milicron would not have eventually closed down their Oakley facility—but that’s a story we’ve covered before. For this purpose, I considered classical music to be the supreme type of music a human being can listen to—and among them at the very top is John Williams. There is nobody better—and I’ve listened to them all.

Most classical composers wrote their music for some play centuries before they ever appeared on NPR radio. So to me it was not deficient to look at John Williams as one who will eventually surpass the memory of all the obvious musical minds in the future. Movies are modern plays, so a film score is tomorrow’s classical music that will play on NPR radio in the future, all the time. These days however if anybody happened to look at my iPod they would only see two primary names on the entire 10G device, John Williams and Hans Zimmer. There are a few others, but 95% of my iPod is filled with those two musical film composers. Of those two, Hans Zimmer is clearly the student of the master, John Williams. I don’t see them as comparable in any way—other than they both make music. Nobody writes music like John Williams—I listen to him nearly every day in some fashion or another and I never get tired of the way he strings together compositions.

As we were sitting at the bottom of the hour trying to get Matt’s guest on the air, I thought about why I was eager for The Force Awakens by thinking about what I liked most about the recently released trailer—the final one before the film opens on December 18th. It was the scene from a series of clips where the Millennium Falcon was entering hyperspace from the inverted direction speeding into blue light accompanied musically by an upgrade from the previous Han and Leia theme. That was fresh music made just for this trailer and it was stunning in how it helped invoke curiosity. John Williams understands just the right notes to put on a page for what is happening on the screen. The way he tells stories through music is extraordinary, and it was his music that I wanted to hear most regarding the new film.

I meant it when I said it on the air, the Disney Company could put hand puppets on the screen for The Force Awakens and I wouldn’t care so long as I had yet another opportunity to listen to a film score by the great John Williams. He enjoys making swashbuckler type of compositions and really thrives in the type of story that Star Wars is, so it typically brings out the best in him. If the story is not something I can get into, I will at least enjoy the John Williams music—which is what I am looking forward to most. It’s not often that the entire world will attend a musical concert that is classical in nature. Literally the entire planet will be attending a John Williams concert when The Force Awakens opens just ahead of Christmas 2015. And there is nothing negative about that.

Music doesn’t need language—it transcends social limitations and reaches for the pit of our very souls for understanding. Based on that 20/20 clip, it was obvious then that John Williams was on a crash course with destiny as the greatest composer of all time—at least over the last 1000 years—because there has been nobody like him ever. He’s just the right mix of everything musical. No matter how much I listened to Bach, or Mozart on NPR radio, when they would occasionally put on some John Williams music—from any movie—it was clear that a master had assembled the notes. With that in mind there isn’t much Disney can do to ruin Star Wars so long as John Williams is the man behind the music. Star Wars will always be good so long as the music from those movies are made by the 83-year-old composer who was always ahead of his time and is the best that ever occupied nostalgia. Film music is considered low-brow entertainment among the art critics of our day—but that’s because they’re in the back of the train. Eventually those art analyzers will catch up to what I’m saying today—that John Williams is the primary reason that millions will love the new film and it will be the largest and most diverse opening to an orchestral concert in the history of earth—and that is enough to give anyone goose bumps because the impact it will have on shaping our future generations will be paramount. I suspect that The Force Awakens score will be the grand fortissimo to a long and prosperous career.   But more than that, it will be the last act of a brilliant mind, who would rather write alone all day behind a piano than do anything else—which is why he has been and will always be the greatest.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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