Tag: Rich Hoffman

Why America Should Abolish Labor Day: The Marxist roots of a national holiday

It was a disgusting Labor Day Holiday in 2015. I have never liked Labor Day because the premise of it speaks of unionized activity. And of course the premise of organized labor is a bad one, collective bargaining, collective adversarial relationships with management, and the greatest insult of all, the expectation that a job is an entitlement that should not be connected to performance. Entertainment unions aren’t as bad as manufacturing and government sector unions because there is still a bit of free market capitalism present in those fields. If a star football player or movie star doesn’t put butts in seats, their value goes way down. But in almost every case, labor unions do not connect productive work to their efforts at solidarity and their efforts are criminal viewed through the proper lens of capitalism.

Even more sickening are the number of times during Labor Day that employees were termed as “workers” in the mode used commonly in Karl Mark’s Communist Manifesto.   Such as the term at the end of the book, “workers of the world, unite.” Democrats and labor union leaders use the term “worker” in precisely the same fashion and every time I hear it I am reminded of just how much communism has penetrated the capitalist culture of America much to all of our detriment. When President Obama or VP Joe Biden say “worker” they are using communist terms to describe people. Their vantage point is clearly framed by Karl Marx—and that is the general spirit of Labor Day—to me it’s a communist recognition holiday—so I don’t like it.

Of course from a communist perspective the White House thought it appropriate to issue a new executive order on Labor Day—this one was one of the most disgusting that I can remember in recent history. Here’s how The Blaze reported the story:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Showing solidarity with workers on Labor Day, President Barack Obama will sign an executive order Monday requiring paid sick leave for employees of federal contractors, including 300,000 who currently receive none.

The White House wouldn’t specify the cost to federal contractors to implement the executive order, which Obama was to address at a major union rally and breakfast in Boston. The Labor Department said any costs would be offset by savings that contractors would see as a result of lower attrition rates and increased worker loyalty, but produced nothing to back that up.

Under the executive order, employees working on federal contracts gain the right to a minimum of one hour of paid leave for every 30 hours they work. Stretched out over 12 months, that’s up to seven days per year. The order will allow employees to use the leave to care for sick relatives as well, and will affect contracts starting in 2017 — just as Obama leaves office.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/09/07/heres-how-obama-will-mark-labor-day/

Here’s the problem with this ridiculous executive order and the Labor Day that it was signed on—it celebrates “not working,” non productivity. It is a celebration of staying home and doing leisurely activities as opposed to actually working. The premise is a bad one rooted in laziness. When Marx says “workers of the world unit” in the Communist Manifesto and Barack Obama tells those workers to stay home more often, they are both building a sense of entitlement toward the endeavor of work that is unhealthy, and detrimental for a capitalist nation. Marx says to unite so that through collectivism they gain leveraging power to deprive an employer of their labor so that they can make ridiculous mandates as to the allocation of their effort toward productive enterprise.

Just before Labor Day a middle-aged male uttered happiness at their ability to have a four-day weekend. They had Friday off, but would also have Monday off due to the national holiday. They were quite happy to be free of work for four consecutive days. The statement to me was troubling because it indicated that the work the young man was doing was so far from what he’d rather be doing that he considered the opportunity for freedom from that expectation enough to proclaim joy. Now I’m sure a lot of people feel that way toward their jobs, but that doesn’t make it right. If you feel that way about something you work at, I feel sorry for you. Working is a joy. When I do it, it is part of my life in every way. I work while I’m at Disney World. I work at 4 am—I work all the time, even during holidays, weekends, all hours of the day because I see work as a creative endeavor and it feels good to make things. I enjoy making things. It is a joy to bring things to life that did not exist before. The thoughts of that middle-aged man were not something I could understand, or sympathize with. What would that person be doing besides working, playing video games, watching a movie, or just talking with friends? Those might be fun exercises, but they are often spectator sports. In the case of video games and other entertainment, the programmers did the work; the players just enjoy the productivity that brought the product to life. Enjoying entertainment is not in and of itself productive—its leisure. Productivity is when you bring something to life and the effort creates economic energy. Being productive is quite rewarding. You feel good after a hard day of work.

Yet the president is instigating a quandary that does not make sense. On one hand he is saying that workers are valuable, then on the other that they aren’t needed, because if they can afford to take off one hour of paid leave for every thirty hours they work, clearly they aren’t being paid for productive enterprise—but are relegated to the type of work typically associated with the government office worker—a butt in a seat that does very little but browse the internet all day while being paid extraordinary amounts of money for nothing. Obama clearly doesn’t understand the value of hard work and is clearly aligned with the referred middle-aged guy who was happy to have four days off for Labor Day. They don’t want to work; they simply want a job that pays them so they can do what they want in their leisure time. Obama has shown that his value in a job is not in productive output, but in time off work. That is an important distinction. It is a false assumption based on Karl Marx, not any capitalist philosopher. The failure is in the basic premise established on a college campus with Marxist pot smokers ignorant to the benefits of real productivity.

I would be alright with getting rid of the Labor Day Holiday completely. America doesn’t need to spend less time at work; it needs to work more, and harder. That may not be a popular sentiment, but you don’t get to be a great nation sitting around playing games all day. You have to do things that are productive, even if it’s fixing something around the house, or getting groceries. Productive output is the measure we have in life to gauge success. For those who couldn’t wait to have four days off, what did any of them achieve in those four days besides some extra sleep and more time to perform leisurely tasks? How productive was that long weekend, really? Not much, because the American government promotes that lazy, lackluster communist mentality that is so common around Washington D.C. They promote the entire nation to think the way they do—and to them Labor Day means spending time on their boats, eating out, or having more time to socialize with others—all acts that require the productivity of someone. To them they care not a bit—so long as it’s not them.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Leadership of Jameis Winston: A commodity more important than gold

Leadership is likely the most valuable commodity that an individual can offer any organization. When leadership is natural, it elevates everyone to perform at a higher level and can sustain enthusiasm under difficult circumstances. When my favorite football team drafted Jameis Winston, I was a little disappointed because I was rooting for Marcus Mariota. I thought the Mariota athleticism would be a better fit in Tampa Bay than a pocket passer like Winston. Considering that the Tampa Bay coaches had watched a lot more film on Winston than I had I trusted their judgment to take the Florida State Heisman Trophy winner. After watching Winston in practice and in three of four pre-season games, I am happy with the decision and would like to welcome Winston to the Buccaneer family. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW WHY I LIKE THE BUCS. It is obvious that Tampa Bay wasn’t just looking for an arm at quarterback, they were looking for a leader and between Winston and Mariota, it was certainly Jameis who was the better natural leader. That will be important years from now when both kids are older and less physically agile. Leadership always trumps skill, and after watching this segment of Jon Gruden’s QB Camp it is obvious that Winston is oozing with leadership.

Football for a lot of people is a way of life. There are times during the business week where talk about football becomes quite animated. For me it’s just a game, not much different from a game of X-Wing by Fantasy Flight Games. In my world they are all just as important. Football is just one of my entertainment options. The purpose of the game is to get a football to move across the field of play to score points. It’s a game invented by capitalism for the purpose of referencing American lifestyles in a game format. But what is more interesting to me is the displays of leadership that come out in exceptional athletes under pressure. That pressure would not exist but for the rules of the game, a last-minute touchdown throw as time runs out to win the game. Throwing a 22 yard bomb on a 4th and 14 in the fourth quarter. Or a sack on a 3rd and 2 to stop a drive and protect a lead. Leadership under pressure is what I enjoy most about football.

As many know I have been a fan of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers football team for quite a long time. I enjoy watching them even during bad seasons because the organization is always trying to win. The Glazer organization is constantly changing things to find the right ingredients to make a winning team. Last year they only won two games, but I paid attention to every one of them, and enjoyed them for the entertainment they provided to me. I knew the Buccaneers blew the last game of the season last year with the Saints on purpose to get Winston in the draft, so I trusted they knew what they were doing. Their season was already over, but they had a chance to pick their quarterback, and they picked Jameis Winston because of his excellent leadership ability.

I became sold on Winston watching him in the pre-season fight through some tough times. He won me over when he stated to Jon Gruden that he always felt like he could win a game even if the score was 50-0 against him. I understand that thought process as I also am the same way. To my way of thinking there is never a “surrender,” there is never a problem that can’t be overcome, and in the game of football, that is a more valuable attribute than having the ability to scramble out of the pocket to buy four more seconds of play. In the long run, Winston’s leadership will be much more valuable to fans of the Buccaneers organization and that was obvious after the pre-season concluded.

When it is natural for a young person to understand that he needs to look other people in the eye and elevate their personal performance on an individual level, it is a trait that cannot be taught. Charisma under pressure is a value that is more valuable than all the gold in the world, because such leadership ability is rarer. The tenacity to never get down when ominous forces are present is far more important than any physical ability. And that is what Tampa Bay has decided to invest in. Not just a football player, but a charismatic leader who can elevate those around him even when the bright lights are off in the stadium. A real leader is one even when they are alone and think nobody is looking.

I’ve been known to have large doses of that leadership ability. It’s not like it’s a secret. It has come natural all my life. My natural optimism for life is something that most people don’t understand. They believe that its contorted enthusiasm rooted in false bravado. They think that because they don’t possess it themselves. What I have and obviously Jameis Winston has, is the ability to never see defeat even when the world is collapsing around observation. And people respond to that type of tenacity because behind such people, even though their methods may appear reckless, is safety and opportunity.   Tampa Bay will go to another Superbowl behind Jameis Winston not because of his arm or physical abilities—but because of his leadership.

So I’d like Jameis to know that at least I’m happy he’s a Tampa Bay Buc. I will be a fan of his even if he doesn’t win a single game this year. He will eventually. I am a fan of the Bucs because of their character, not necessarily the points on the board, because to me football is just a game. But the type of men that the game makes is more important than what happens between four quarters of play on a Sunday afternoon. For me watching Jameis under pressure and exhibiting great leadership will be more fun than what ends up in the win/loss column. Which is the reason I’m happy that the Buccaneers picked him as their top draft selection—they didn’t just get a great player—they acquired a leader, and that will help the entire city of Tampa be just a bit better as a result.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Communist Infiltration of the Catholic Church: Faith and religion are not conducive to the moral value of a capitalist culture

One of the problems I have with religion is the basic premise of it, which is rooted in “faith.” The quandary of populism is to say that a person of “faith” is the same as assuming that the person is a “good” human being such as, “he’s a man of faith,” which automatically congers up thoughts of a value system rooted in religious belief so he would therefore be assumed to be a good person. Yet, statements like that are idiotic and are clearly false. Faith is a stupid word because it implies that there isn’t thought given to an action. Faith is lazy; it says that a person has surrendered thought to fate without doing the work of inputting intelligence to the conditions of our times. It is not enough to have “faith” in an afterlife when many decisions made every day must be considered with thoughtful input to maintain the values associated with goodness.

Religion therefore becomes tricky to the capitalist government reformer because government often grows most when it appeals to people’s faith. Once a government official or even a branch of government can appeal to the “faith” of the people in their ranks, trouble begins. This is particularly troublesome in the United States where the people are free to think and do as they please until they get to church and are supposed to live by rules established not by a deity whom speaks to them on Sunday mornings, but the interpretations of that deity translated over thousands of years to mold behavior in the present. You can’t really be a free-thinker and self driven person Monday through Saturday, except to pray to a deity whom we’ve never met, then give Sunday to that same deity—and expect to be considered a rational human being. Notions of “faith” and “sacrifice” to that faith are just stupid. Any rational mind would think so.

Yet religion has benefits. It does introduce social values rooted in kindness. And that’s where things get really tricky, because there is value in religion which opens the door to the stupidity of blind faith. When Manning R Johnson testified before the House of Un-American Activities on the subversive activities of the Kremlin within the Catholic Church in 1953 he did so as a former member of the Communist Party. He wasn’t some pundit speculating, he was actually from the Communist Party in the United States and provided oral testimony to the facts of strategy being introduced at the time. Here is a bit of that testimony.

“Once the tactic of infiltration of religious organizations was set by the Kremlin … the Communists discovered that the destruction of religion could proceed much faster through infiltration of the (Catholic) Church by Communists operating within the Church itself. The Communist leadership in the United States realized that the infiltration tactic in this country would have to adapt itself to American conditions (Europe also had its cells) and the religious make-up peculiar to this country. In the earliest stages it was determined that with only small forces available to them, it would be necessary to concentrate Communist agents in the seminaries. The practical conclusion drawn by the Red leaders was that these institutions would make it possible for a small Communist minority to influence the ideology of future clergymen in the paths conducive to Communist purposes. This policy of infiltrating seminaries was successful beyond even our Communist expectations.”

http://patriotupdate.com/global-warming-and-communist-infiltration-of-the-church/

Anytime you have an organization that is collectivist in nature full of people who subject themselves to thoughtless “faith” you have an opportunity to mold those people into any shape a charismatic leader might desire. For the communists advancing their thoughts into the Christian church was easy as many thoughts of Jesus could easily be considered socialist in their nature. A religion reflecting the morality of capitalism has not yet been introduced effectively, and the communists knew that if they could infiltrate the Catholic Church, they could easily steer away people from capitalism to socialism as a military endeavor designed to change a nation without firing a single shot.

Fast forward to the present, an actual Pope from the Catholic Church is planning to address the American congress on September 24th to press them into saving planet earth with green policies. As anybody with intelligence knows, communism has changed its name from the harsh policies of the past to a New Age type of religion called the “green movement.” To accept global warming and other far left policies requires “faith” in “leaders” to do our thinking for us. This was always the plan for communists who changed their names to environmental conservationists. To spread communism they effectively sought to appeal to the weaknesses of the religious right and to push anti-capitalist thinking under the door of resistance by disguising itself as a religion based on faith. Once faith is used to make decisions; it becomes easy to apply it to everything. That Pope whom we’re supposed to accept that the Catholic Church put into power because of some divine smoke came from a chimney, is an actual socialist from Argentina who does not like or understand the capitalism of America. But millions of Americans will listen to the guy because they have faith in the Catholic Church and that the guy dressed in white is a “man of God.” See how the communist infiltration of the Catholic Church as described by Manning R. Johnson works.

Global warming is simply another name for communism. Environmentalists are thus indicated because they have faith in the deity Mother Earth and will make decisions against capitalism in favor of that New Age religion centered on the planet—just like some raw primitive out of a hunter and gatherer tribe. Yet the logic of a free thinking republic such as what America is supposed to be, would dictate that capitalism take mankind away from earth to the reaches of space to advance our culture away from Mother Earth, not deeper into its bosom. The old communists know that if they lose the appeal of sacrifice to invisible deities and thoughtless sentiment based on “faith” that their movement of collectivist infiltration will finally die—as it should have many years ago. So the Catholic Church put in place an activist Pope to hide socialist policies behind a white robe and expects to sell little “C” communism to a typically conservative country through their religion. For me, upon realizing this, I simply stepped away and said, “no thanks.” I stopped going to church because “faith” is not a governing principle in my life, and it shouldn’t be for anyone. It is good to believe in goodness, and to have trust in other people. But blind, lazy, faith is dangerous as it opens the mind to thoughtless action. And religion is filled with such thoughtless enterprise which is not conducive in any way to logic and observable decision-making. For freedom to work and capitalism to flourish, thought is needed—and that is not what the Catholic Church is selling to its congregations. And now dear reader, you know why.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Air Hog’s Millennium Falcon: Another step closer to Moller’s Skycar

imageLately, I have had enough pressure and stress to kill a man nine times over. But I do enjoy life in the pressure cooker, so my participation was not reluctant. However, I do know how to manage that stress, and part of that is to put my mind some place fun to give it needed vacations from time to time. It was a perfect opportunity for Star Wars to have their Force Friday launch of the new toy lines Disney was unleashing for the Force Awakens film coming up this Christmas of 2015. My brother and kids did what millions of other people did and that was hit the stores at midnight on Thursday to get access to the first stuff. They began sending me pictures of merchandise at around 12:25 am through text messages and I was living the fun with them through their inputs. I chose to enjoy the rituals at home watching the live stream from Disney that took place nearly 20 straight hours from spots all across the world unboxing these new toys and demonstrating them. I wrote about the significance of this Star Wars ritual in yesterday’s article. CLICK HERE to review.

Star Wars toys are something that I have always enjoyed. I still have mine from when I was a kid and my grandson now plays with them when he comes over. I have always been impressed with the artistic detail of Star Wars toys. I still get them from time to time when I see something really cool. Typically my rule is that if the toy is a Millennium Falcon, I typically buy it. There are too many Star Wars toys to collect them all, so I stick to Millennium Falcons the famous pirate vessel from the original movies. I have a special relationship with the Millennium Falcon. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.

So I was relaxing at home on Friday watching the live stream from Toronto, Canada. I thought the toys up to that point were cool, fun, and worth collecting at some point after I validated that the new movie justified it. But there was nothing I had to rush out to get, until the commentators in Toronto showed off the new line of Star Wars related products from Air Hogs—the miniature remote control helicopter company who is always well stocked at Target. I have been impressed with Air Hogs as a company as they have taken really expensive remote control technology and driven the prices down so that non professional RC users could enjoy them indoors. Some of the smartest engineers I know are members locally of The Greater Cincinnati Radio Control Club that actually has their own airfield across the river from my house in Trenton, Ohio. They have some really wonderful model airplanes that were recently on full display at the Butler County Regional Airport “Flying Circus.” Those planes cost several thousand dollars each and are quite sophisticated. Air Hogs has taken similar technology and advanced it to the level of indoor flight, which really requires light weight, but durable materials, powerful engines and unmatched control to keep from running into everything. I have one of the first Air Hog helicopters that pretty much went up and down, but had little control regarding pitch and yaw, and I was impressed with it—for something that only cost about $30. But I hadn’t flown some of the most recent models, which I knew had come a long way. That’s when I saw the new love of my life, the Toronto presenters brought out on the stage the new Air Hog Millennium Falcon, a quad engine drone essentially complete with flood lights and engine indicators. My next thought was to get to the store to buy it.

imageSince I wasn’t at the stores during the midnight rush, I doubted that I’d find such a wonderful device several hours after the great release. My wife was hopeful so we went to Walmart to see if we could find one. As I suspected, the shelves had been plucked through and there certainly wasn’t an Air Hog Millennium Falcon left. I even prodded the employees asking them if they had any hidden anywhere—which they said they hadn’t. The tornado of Star Wars fans had already ransacked everything until their next shipment—a week away—had left their shelves mostly empty. So we started to head for home, but before that we decided to stop by Target—just in case.

Again, what I have been saying about the cultural significance of Star Wars was beginning to be evident at Target. Stormtroopers were on the front doors of the Bridgewater location and a massive Chewbacca loomed to great guests as they came through the door. Space ship battles were on display hanging from the ceiling as even I was a bit surprised at the level of Target’s commitment to the Force Friday event. My hopes went up that they just might just have my Air Hog Millennium Falcon in stock, even though I knew it was unlikely. We made our way back to the Star Wars toy section and there it was. Target had three of them. I grabbed one. Additionally Target had the whole back corner of the store dedicated to Star Wars complete with Halloween costumes and more toys including two very vicious looking Huffy Star Wars bicycles. Customers were happy, people had smiles on their faces as they looked through the various Star Wars products and the enthusiasm was palatable. These weren’t the hard-core fans from the night before. These were just average people, and they were feeling the Force. I shuddered a bit at witnessing all this. The new movie hadn’t even hit theaters yet and already there was this much enthusiasm. I wondered if I had understated the importance of my previous article already indicated. I had written it while watching the day long podcast and as enthusiastic for the future as I was, I may have not captured the true potential of the upcoming Star Wars influence.image

Regardless, my wife and I rushed home, forgot to eat dinner and I played around with the Air Hog Millennium Falcon until the late hours of that night. The first thing I did the next day upon waking was play with it some more. The Air Hog Falcon is truly remarkable to me for several reasons. It’s pretty easy to fly; it has a wonderful gyrostabilization system controlling all four quad engines. The Falcon is a large odd-shaped vehicle not typically suited for aerodynamic flight. I had seen a very cleaver Millennium Falcon drone recently that was very expensive and very technical, as it had been hand-built. But this was a commercial craft and the Air Hog engineers had nailed a pretty difficult task—making a flat non-aerodynamic disk–fly—very well. Extremely well. I couldn’t stop flying it. It took about an hour to charge the vessel for about 7 minutes of flight. The internal Lithium Polymer battery had to be large enough to power the four quad engines, but small enough to keep the weight down. So Air Hogs elected to have a smaller battery to capture the proper performance. That is a bit frustrating because you can’t fly the ship long between charging, but the performance is worth the effort. It’s kind of like a drag racing car, fully fueled, it’s out of gas by the end of a quarter-mile. To get the performance you have to sacrifice storage capacity.

However I couldn’t help but think of how well the gyroscopic system worked on the Air Hogs Falcon. The small little toy was a perfect example of how Paul Moller’s Skycar will operate once people accept the technology as viable. The Air Hog Millennium Falcon was a perfect example of how those future flying cars will work. Each quad engine working independently controlled by computer input to add thrust or decrease it based on the needs of the vehicles gyrostablization sensors. For a toy, it was extremely sophisticated, and was certainly a hint of a mode of transportation that is coming fast. I couldn’t help but think that there were thousands of people just like me playing with some of these new Star Wars toys thinking the same thing. Once the film hits and everything escalates to a fevered pitch intellectually, the desire to have real Star Wars technology functioning in our actual lives will increase dramatically. The toys and films introduce the idea of possibly to us. Science finds ways to deliver those ideas, and Air Hogs simply nailed it with their Millennium Falcon. A remarkable device simply put.

I closed out Force Friday playing with my remote control Falcon hopeful for the world. All this fun of course is the work of unadulterated capitalism. Without capitalism the joy I witnessed across the world from Japan, China, Australia, France, England, Brazil, Canada and of course the United States would not have been possible. I wasn’t the only one excited that day to purchase a new Star Wars item. Capitalism is what put so much joy on people’s faces and introduced new technical inventions to a hungry public. The whole endeavor started with imagination and the capital investment to make them possible. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who stopped by the local convenience store on the way home to buy a twenty pack of AA batteries, and also some more Mello Yello in the process. Life is good and we have capitalism to thank for it. Because at the heart of the Star Wars universe, particularly under Disney’s direction is capitalism—which is the source of joy so many people felt as a result of Force Friday. And it gave me a wonderful, much-needed distraction when I most needed it—and a cool new Millennium Falcon to add to my collection.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

‘High Plains Drifter’: A Clint Eastwood western that advanced American philosophy

I watched High Plains Drifter as one of the very first movies I saw when I was newly moved out of my parent’s house. I rented it because of the cover art on the VHS tape, Clint Eastwood holding a gun and a bullwhip. I had seen at that time most of Eastwood’s movies, so I wanted to see them all and this one was on the list. I didn’t expect much, but was very surprised to see that the film was a masterpiece—a sheer work of unapologetic authenticity. It may very well be my favorite western of all time and is the summation of a span of westerns by Clint Eastwood starting with A Fistful of Dollars and ending with Pale Rider that defined the genre forever. Eastwood’s westerns were Ayn Rand tales set on the frontier of America and were very much a part of my childhood. I loved westerns, all westerns, but Clint Eastwood westerns were uniquely special to me. I could identify with them immensely. At the time that I first saw High Plains Drifter I was living a very similar life and I didn’t feel a bit of guilt about it. The established order of things said that I should. Until I saw that director Clint Eastwood understood my vantage point in High Plains Drifter, I had nothing but gut instinct to tell me I was on the right path.

I will never forget the Friday before I saw High Plains Drifter. I drove my friends to Miami University for a bit of ruckus activity which ended up in a bar and a fight with the first stringers of the football team. The fight evolved into the back alley where I and one other friend literally took on the football team until the police came and arrested everyone—but me. The reason the police left me alone was strange. I was so mad at the time that I would have punched anybody who came near me, and they seemed to understand that. Instead of feeding their aggression, they backed off and arrested everyone else starting with the outside of the pile working inward. When it was just me and the rest of the police left with blood and pieces of clothing all over the place, I spoke calmly to them realizing and feeling quite satisfied that I had just done something that seemed impossible. My friends were arrested and carted off to jail and I had to find a way to get them out. But otherwise, I was the last one standing even though I was one of the first in the fray. It was a good feeling.

I managed to work things out with the police which ended up at the jail eventually and I had my friends released. I spoke to everyone in charge intelligently, which gained respect and leverage allowing me to get my friends out without a court appearance, which I didn’t think would be possible. My friends were baffled as to how I walked away from the incident without being arrested, and how I managed to get them out of jail. I didn’t know how to explain it myself. But on the next evening we decided to stay home and rent a movie, and that movie was High Plains Drifter. I had my answer at the start of the third act when a woman who Clint Eastwood had just slept with told him to be careful because he was a man who made other people afraid. From that Eastwood explained, “People are only afraid of what they know about themselves inside.” I knew somewhere in that exchange of dialogue was an answer that I would carry with me for the rest of my life. And the woman was right. Confident people—excessively confident people—scare the meager types like those who were in the fictional western town of Lago—from the film. And those meager types were easy to control once you looked them in the eye. That is what many of Eastwood’s westerns from that period were about—but specifically High Plains Drifter.

After watching that movie I felt like a much more focused person. I understood much more about myself—which might be troubling if not for the fact that Clint Eastwood was playing a ghost of some kind in the film—a vengeful spirit from Hell set to cast justice on the small mining town and all the guilty people within it. I thought Clint Eastwood was the greatest director on earth for capturing all the controversial topics he explored in that story with such effortless mastery. High Plains Drifter was a 1973 American supernatural western film produced by Robert Daley for Malpaso Company and Universal Studios, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, and written by Ernest Tidyman (who also wrote the novelization). Eastwood plays an enigmatic wraith, who metes out justice in a corrupt frontier mining town, where he arrives as a stranger.[3] The film was influenced by the work of Eastwood’s two major collaborators, film directors Sergio Leone and Don Siegel.[4]

The film was shot on location on the shores of Mono Lake, California. Dee Barton wrote the eerie film score. The film was critically acclaimed at the time of its initial release and remains popular today, holding a score of 96% at the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes.

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

As I have been thinking about the significance of American gunfighters of late, this film keeps returning to me in a revelatory way. It is important, and specific to the American experience. I didn’t know it when I first watched it, but it is clearly in hindsight a masterpiece. It has within it an element that Ayn Rand brought out in her novels—an overman quality that is so needed. There was an evolution of human thinking that was occurring in that movie that as inescapable. There was honesty to the type of independence specific to American culture that Eastwood had tapped in to.

John Wayne was not a fan of High Plains Drifter. His westerns were about honor, sacrifice, loyalty and courage. While those are appealing attributes, High Plains Drifter was about something else. And I decided that I would commit my life to that something else. I had a taste of it at that campus fight. I had touched on it many times, but Clint Eastwood had fleshed it out and put it on the screen for all to see. His gunfighter character in the film was more than just a man—literally. But that made it even that much more appealing to me. High Plains Drifter is an American movie classic that is in a category all by itself. It is a western—the best of its kind. But it’s more than that, its philosophy—a thinking which is fresh and unique to the individual experience with an unequivocal desire for justice. Justice at every level possible, one that started with the gun, but ultimately enacted with a superior mind and unshakable confidence changed philosophic perspective for the better. It is good to keep the mind on the high plains of life and to face those tribulations alone. For that is the path toward something new, and specific to America. And freedom rides in its wake.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Cracker Barrel: Memories of an America yet to be

I was visiting a whip maker friend of mine in Middletown, Ohio who is working on a special project for me. It was Sunday around lunch time and we were early. So my wife and I elected to stop by the local Cracker Barrel for a late breakfast. Many people find it humorous that I often refer to Cracker Barrel as fine dinning, because for me it is. Now I have dined in many great restaurants, but I prefer Cracker Barrel, especially on a long trip because of the country setting and general store. The food and service to my experience has always been great and I love the “old west” feel of them when I step inside.image

My very first exposure to a Cracker Barrel was in Northern Kentucky. My grandfather who was the son of an active moonshiner from the sticks of coal country invited me as a very young boy to go shooting with the men in the family at his childhood home. His father at the time had long been dead, but as a boy he ran the hills from the law smuggling moonshine during prohibition. Their home was about the size of a modern bedroom and it was back in a valley about 30 miles northwest of Buckhorn Lake—a pretty remote location, especially when I was a kid. Back then there wasn’t much development between Lexington and Cincinnati, so if you didn’t gas up in Northern Kentucky, you might run out of fuel before Lexington. It was winter and I rode in the back of a pickup truck with some older cousins, some of whom were already men. I was by far the youngest. It was the day after Christmas and all the men were going shooting. It was my first time firing powerful weapons like a .38 special and a 30-30 rifle.

Cracker Barrel had one of their very first national stores in Northern Kentucky and it looked a lot like they do now. It was 6 AM, the sun wouldn’t be up for at least another hour and it was cold. We were all dressed in gun holsters, long hunting knives and day packs when we stepped inside to have some breakfast next to a roaring fireplace. It set in my mind for life a love for the place. It was the nearest thing I’d ever get to an authentic cowboy experience, wandering in off the open range, armed to the teeth to stop into a saloon/general store for some grub. It was a testosterone driven occurrence that shaped me for life. The waitress and manager could have turned us away at the door because we looked like we were there to rob a bank. I have worn a cowboy hat since I was in the fourth grade, so I had mine on feeling like a western drifter—and I loved the feeling as snow rushed in behind us as we stepped inside. They could have told us to leave the guns and packs in our car, but instead they asked if we wanted coffee next to a roaring fire. Years later when I saw the Clint Eastwood western The Unforgiven, the first saloon scene reminded me explicitly of that moment in my time—and it stayed with me forever. That was America. Cracker Barrel for me would always represent the best that America had to offer.

Most of the people on that shooting trip with me are dead now. Some died of old age, some from not meeting high expectations in life, some by personal destructive behavior. I could see much of it back then on that shooting trip. In the back of that truck where it was so cold ice formed on our noses, the older men passed around a whiskey flask. They offered it to me even though I was way too young to drink it. I turned it down. And if you traced their lives with mine and noticed how far apart they are now, you could trace it back to those types of decisions on a shooting trip on a cold December morning. They looked down at me a bit for not wanting to share the whisky, but my grandfather thought it took guts, which is all I really cared about. Once we started shooting, nobody thought anything about who drank what, or who said a curse word. Guns made all men equal and respect was derived by that realization. When I showed I could fire the 30-30 without being knocked down due to my small stature there was respect, and I would carry that lesson with me for life. The whole experience started with a Cracker Barrel.

My wife had never been to such a place as a Cracker Barrel before meeting me. But we went to one just north of Knoxville on our honeymoon as we traveled back from Gatlinburg. For her it summed up everything we had experienced on our first days together as a married couple and she fell in love with it for life. For years we would take our children there while vacationing and make a big deal about each visit, no matter where we were. One time we were on our way to a Star Wars convention in Indianapolis and my kids were dressed up as Jedi. We stopped at one about 45 minutes outside of Indianapolis. My kids had the experience I had as a young man, stepping in dressed as warriors. They had some unique looks, but everyone was friendly and it was a fun experience. They never forgot it. Then there was a time while traveling by motorcycle to a film festival in northern Ohio. My oldest daughter had never ridden a motorcycle before and this was her first experience—on a long road trip up north. Cracker Barrel just north of Columbus on an early summer morning in the middle of the week was an oasis of pleasure—a cozy place that always said “home” as you step into its doors.

One thing about Cracker Barrels is that they are almost always busy, especially in the noon time hours. People are often willing to wait for 30 minutes to get something they could get at McDonald’s in a fraction of the time. The reason is that most people have a special relationship to Cracker Barrel similar to mine. The restaurant chain has built their brand around American tradition for decades and people respect it enough to wait.   That was the situation my wife and I found ourselves in on a Sunday afternoon in late August, 2015, before we met on business with our whip making friend David Crain for a “special project.”

I have been thinking about guns a lot these days. The Obama administration has caused great unrest and unsettled the most rational by unleashing the insane, corrupt, and perpetually dependent to collect what the president promised during his campaigns, redistributed wealth in trade for a vote. And the results have been menacing. Police are being executed all around the country. Border violence is disturbingly common. And religious fanatics are going on holy wars against infidels with the apparent support of the American media. Long gone are the days of the Saturday morning westerns, and heroes of tradition. Those wonderful attributes are missing during our nightly news, but they are quite alive and flourishing at Cracker Barrel’s across the country, and that is what my wife and I were seeking.

As I waited for my breakfast I looked around the room at all the unique paraphernalia that they customarily have lining the walls. Most of it looked like the kind of items you might find at garage sales, but typically they speak of traditional American items, old Coke signs, early gas station markers, looms, spindles, scrubbing boards. However on this particular visit, I noted how many guns were displayed on the wall. Above my head was a Winchester lever-action and around the dining room where several musket style weapons from what looked like the pre-Civil War period. Then my attention was pulled toward an advertisement from perhaps the 50s from a drink called NEHI. It said, “What’s getting into kids these days.” Around the picture of a girl drinking what looked to be a healthy beverage alternative were kids playing. Of note was one kid dressed as a frontiersman another as a cowboy complete with a six-gun. Then another picture was of an Indian. It reminded me of the days when kids actually played cowboys and Indians and it wasn’t considered an act of insanity requiring counseling at school for wanting to play with weapons. I realized looking at that picture that the magic of Cracker Barrel was essentially represented in that picture. The family restaurant was a timeless portrayal of the type of America that many in the core of the country still love, and desire desperately to behold. That’s why many of the customers on a Sunday afternoon after church were willing to wait up to an hour to have some eggs and bacon—something they could easily get at home. But what they couldn’t get was the essence of Americana that Cracker Barrel truly is—and will always remain.

The meeting with the whip maker David Crain went well. He is very crafty and during our business dealing he showed me a little side project he was working on. He had been using his wood lathe to make some really marvelous wooden ink pens, the kind of items you might find at Kenwood Mall for $55. He sells them for $20 dollars, which I think is too cheap, but it’s his business. So I picked one up, since that kind of thing is sometimes important to me. If anybody else wants some, let me know and I’ll put you in touch with him. It’s a really good deal. Meeting with David reminds me of the kind of Americans we used to be. Behind his house David has a wood shop, and in it he makes lots of really neat crafts—the kind of things that will probably someday be on the wall of a Cracker Barrel. But with David, we are living tradition in the present, and that made that particular Sunday one that I will not long forget. It was a reminder of what we fight for and why. Much of it can be summed up in the advertisement by NEHL from a time long forgotten–except on the wall of a Cracker Barrel in Middletown, Ohio looming over eggs, bacon, and good memories.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

It Will Always Be Mt. McKinley: The hidden reason behind a mountain name change

Consider that I am from Ohio and that President Mckinley was from that state, I will always think of Mt. McKinley in Alaska as the name it was before Obama and his progressive activists sought to change it to Denali. I don’t really care that since 1975 radical tree hugging hippies and pot smoking losers wanted to rename the highest mountain peak in North America after some “Great One” known by “native” language. If Obama wants to get technical, the Indians of the pre-Columbian era were just as guilty of migration as the European settlers—as the original story of the “Native American” are still being pieced together. Likely it was primarily the Chinese who were the real “Native Americans.” That story does not match the premise of the modern progressive who wants to use Indians as a springboard against American colonialism—and indirectly—capitalism. Here’s how the story was reported by USA Today:

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s three-day trip to Alaska this week will literally change the map of the nation’s 49th state.

Mount McKinley — the 20,237-foot mountain and the tallest in North America — has been renamed Denali, as it was originally known by Alaska Natives before it was renamed to honor President William McKinley.

The mountain, which sits in the 6 million-acre Denali national park, has been known as Denali in Alaska since 1975. Under an order signed by Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, the Denali name will also take effect for all federal usage and, therefore, on all official maps.

The order was signed Friday, but the White House asked that it be announced Monday as part of Obama’s trip to Alaska to highlight the effects of climate change in the Arctic. The White House said the name change “recognizes the sacred status of Denali to generations of Alaska Natives.”

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/08/30/obama-rename-nations-tallest-mountain/71426656/

Denali (/dɨˈnɑːli/), officially called Mount McKinley from 1917 until it was formally renamed in 2015, is the highest mountain peak in North America, with a summit elevation of 20,237 feet (6,168 m) above sea level. At some 18,000 feet (5,500 m), the base-to-peak rise is considered the largest of any mountain situated entirely above sea level.[6] Measured by topographic prominence, it is the third most prominent peak after Mount Everest and Aconcagua. Located in the Alaska Range in the interior of the U.S. state of Alaska, Denali is the centerpiece of Denali National Park and Preserve.

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

I have been to the top of peaks a third of that. I understand the cold and loss of oxygen at those altitudes, but as a statement of natural achievement, I’m not that impressed. I could climb to the top of McKinley right now, in my current health without any conditioning, so I’m not impressed with it. Sure it’s pretty to look at, but I wouldn’t be crying to reach the summit like some climbers do. McKinley has been conquered many times, and it’s no longer a big deal. And from space, it doesn’t look like much. However, to a bunch of primitives wearing animal skins in the hard winter months, climbing to the top of Mount McKinley was an ominous task, not really feasible to them. So from their perspective, it was a “great one.” But to a culture that routinely sends satellites into earth orbit and has settlers on the International Space Station all days of the year looking down from space—and has airplanes that travel at twice that altitude on routine flights across the country, McKinley is no longer a “Great One.”

The reason for the name change now is to incite among the American people a love for nature and a reversion back from the gains made through capitalism back to the primitive focus of indigenous people who function best from tribes always in need of a leader. That is why progressives are trying so hard to make a religion out of the “green movement” and why they think of the Indian as something of our national sacred history.

In 1896, a gold prospector named the mountain McKinley as political support for then-presidential candidate William McKinley, who became president the following year. The United States formally recognized the name Mount McKinley after President Wilson signed the Mount McKinley National Park Act of February 26, 1917.[22] The Alaska Board of Geographic Names changed the name of the mountain to Denali, which is how it is referred to locally. However, a 1975 request by the Alaska state legislature to the United States Board on Geographic Names to do the same was blocked by Ohio congressman Ralph Regula, whose district included McKinley’s hometown of Canton.[23]

To progressives like Obama, money and the creation of it is a bad thing. Money represents value and progressives hate value, or any identification of it. So of course Obama and his greenie weenies are against gold prospecting and everything that the Old West stood for regarding westward expansion. Alaska and the settling of it by the United States to him are all about oil and gold at the exploitation of Eskimos. But without the development of capitalism, Alaska today would be nearly as useless of a terrain as Siberia is right across the Bering Straight. Without gold prospecting or oil drilling Alaska would just be more earthly land not being applied to any productive task. To conservationists who are against human invention and development, that is a grand crusade worthy of sacrificing many to the gods of Mother Earth. But to capitalists who use free enterprise to improve the conditions of human existence, the gold from Alaska, and the wealth discovered through westward expansion set up the United States as an economic powerhouse throughout the world during the Twentieth Century. Of course Obama wants to erase that history—which he has been trying to undo through his economic policies, his EPA activism, and his desires to openly revert North America back to the times of the primitive.

Denali is the name of a primitive group of people who held the mountain in high regard due to their perspective victimization witnessed from their village huts. There’s nothing miraculous about pointing to a big rock on the horizon and declaring that it’s so large that man cannot climb it. But the wealth extracted from Alaska gold mining and oil drilling have created an economy that took mankind well off planet earth to look down on that small rock from space and point out Mount McKinley—a Republican that didn’t last long in office, but was reminiscent of a time when wealth was built and mankind stepped out of the shadows of their village huts. Mount McKinley isn’t a “great one.” It’s just a rock in the middle of Alaska, a state defined by its economic wealth and individualism. That extracted wealth is what sets Alaska apart from Siberia and makes all the difference between a great one and a mere rock on the horizon. And that’s what Obama and his gang of lost tribes are really desiring, a regression back to the time of the village living under the shadows of “Denali.” What they fail to understand is that mankind has overtaken the mountain and their limited perspective. And there is no going back now.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Becoming a Gunfighter: How Howard Darby is saving America

For many years I have worked nearly exclusively with bullwhips to be one of those few handfuls in the world who can be considered an expert. It has always been my thing and I will always enjoy it. However, much of that has been out of necessity. Even further back I was part of a martial art school that was a rather vicious enterprise. The owner was corrupt and he instructed his students to be bad people. He was essentially like the bad school owner in the film Karate Kid. He stole money, ran around with young women, and taught his students to be killers so he could win more trophies in tournaments—and thus, sell more classes for his enterprise. I never liked the guy, and he never liked me. One thing I learned from that experience was how to use nunchucks and other melee weapons. To this very day, there may be people out there as fast as me with nunchucks, but I haven’t met them. If I really get loosened up, I can swing them around the way Bruce Lee did in Fists of Fury.

Martial arts to me was always an oriental practice, and I was always distinctly American. I never wanted to be a samurai, a ninja, or a black belt martial artist. But I did want to be a gunfighter. But the problem was ammunition was expensive and I had no way to really practice it. But I was able to practice with a bullwhip and carry a lot of my melee martial arts training directly over into that western art to a point where I felt I could use it in any combat situation with great precision to the point of invincibility. For the last three decades that’s what I’ve done and it worked out well. I have lived in neighborhoods where practicing with firearms was just out of the question, but practicing with bullwhips was doable. So my love of western arts evolved along those lines.

But times change and always in the back of my mind was the desire to be a real gunslinger. I have done pretty much everything I ever wanted to do with bullwhips. There are several of us around the world who are very good with bullwhips and on a good day we can all beat each other at the various competitions, but you get to a certain point where you either level off, or you take another step. For me, that evolution will be toward a gunfighter.

I share obviously with Howard Darby a specific love of the Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns. They are American martial art films that are significant, and they hold up to time quite effectively. It has not been lost to me that modern society has been distinctly anti-gun which is an insult to American culture, because guns are very much an important part of the United States. Criticizing guns is like insulting an oriental of the merits of martial arts. Don’t tell a Japanese person that their Samurai culture is stupid, because they will be insulted. So why is it that in the United States when someone of authority wants to criticize an action, they make derogatory references to the “Wild West.” The reason is that they want to change the United States into something else—so they attack the art forms that define it.

I’m at a point in my life where guns aren’t so expensive, and I can certainly afford the timing equipment, the holsters, and I have time to practice. Up until a few years ago I worked 16 to 18 hour days so I didn’t have time to pick up on a new skill. But now I do, and I can’t think of a better one for me than that of a gunfighter. I have spent considerable time defending traditional America. I have friends in high places and if I wanted to, I could immediately be a part of any political insider movement and work at a high-profile position. But I don’t want to. I’d rather be a gunfighter.

Each year as I’ve said I use the Annie Oakley event in Darke County, Ohio as a kind of reference point for re-centering my moral compass. At our annual dinner it has been increasingly apparent that the world is hungry for western arts, but people feel guilty for wanting it. In our group we haven’t done much with guns, really due to the stigma behind them—but since our Western Arts Showcase has moved from the fairgrounds to the York Woods area, the regulations have loosened up quite a lot leading me to consider livening things up a bit with actual gun fire. But it takes a lot of practice, and money to get even remotely close to where Howard Darby is. But like a lot of good people in the western arts professions, Darby is promoting his sport so that people like me will enter the field and push things forward. Just like in the whip world, there really aren’t that many people who still perform as gunfighters. It’s been a dying art form. Most who do are older people and that needs to change.

Meanwhile everyone wants to be a black belt in martial arts because there are fewer stigmas in the effort. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are common loves for young people whereas all the old cowboy heroes of days long gone are considered fringe worthy, and that is just appalling. I see Fast Draw as a sport that most adequately promotes the Second Amendment and that makes people like Howard Darby important ambassadors to Constitutional preservation—and I’d like to expand that considerably in the years to come. I think it’s about time that America stop apologizing for being so good, and that all things categorized as Western Arts lose the stigma given by progressive society as outdated, Indian hating, unintelligent, traditionalists. American westerns built our nation into something unique and are much more influential and powerful than martial arts—and I think it would be best if Fast Draw was as common in the future as fishing is today.

With the tools available today, there should be more people like Howard Darby. With Cabela’s superstores two or three hundred miles apart all over the nation, there are plenty of resources for modern shooters to enjoy. It’s not like it used to be, there are plenty of ways to get access to equipment and supplies. That’s another aspect to this desire to become a gunfighter that is so appealing to me now as opposed to several years ago. Back when I was doing some gunsmithing work and had a FFL, Brownells was about the only place you could get really good supplies for such a sport. But these days, Bass Pro and Cabela’s has most of what you need right off the shelf. And it’s a great excuse to shop at those places more often—which represents the best that America has to offer.

It is time to stop apologizing for the gun culture that we have in America. I have no desire to be more like Europe and I certainly don’t want to be more like the mystics of the orient. The American Gunfighter is an art that is rooted in capitalism and honor. It is unique to a free society. And its time that we defend it properly instead of relegating it to western events like the Annie Oakley Days in Greenville, Ohio once a year. I think its time to open things up a bit and let people know that practicing with guns isn’t a shameful experience. Its part of our heritage and that is something we should all cherish. Because it’s ours and nobody else’s.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Trump, Trump, and More TRUMP: The strategic importance of moral capital

The only person I have met who works as hard if not harder than myself, and is doing precisely what I said over four years ago that Republicans should do to re-capture the hearts of America, is Donald Trump which is why these days I write about him it seems every day. He is a relief to me to see someone take the national stage and say the kinds of things I have written about with millions and millions of words. Trump is taking things to a completely new political level. I have watched really smart people over the last five years get eaten completely by the political machines, and watched really stupid people declare that the status quo would once again rule the day. That is until June of 2015 when Donald Trump announced he was running for president. And over the last couple of months before Labor Day even arrived, Trump had molded himself into a really good political candidate. Watch his South Carolina speech from the last week of August.

We are watching history being made and things are being said that until Trump were only said as boisterously here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom. Trump’s never back down approach is so refreshing. And nearly every day he has found a way to make news. I know how difficult it is because I have been asked often how I found enough topics to write about every day—and how I can write so much. Trump is going to the next level, every day he finds some injustice to challenge and he seamlessly weaves it into his speeches with no Teleprompters, political handlers, or caution of any kind. His platform is undeniably conservative, strong borders, pro second amendment, pro business, pro military, against Common Core, etc,. but unlike other candidates, he actually gives the impression that he can do something about any of those topics. He’s a doer, not just a talker, and that is the reason for his dominance in the political arena.

Until Trump, I was one of the few people who called people like Anthony Weiner names like “sleazebag” and “perv” based on his behavior. A lot of people thought about it, or danced around the subject jokingly, but only a person who does not live in a glass house can afford to throw rocks, so most people don’t. After all, as the Ashley Madison incident recently exposed, there are millions of men looking to cheat on their wives discreetly and only a few women, who were likely professional prostitutes. So a lot of people were shamed into stepping off any high horse that they may have fantasized of having to formulate an opinion, and they let Anthony Weiner off the hook. Trump being a man free of drugs, alcohol, or financial concern can rampage through a jungle of political hacks because he knows that he can throw rocks and nobody can toss them back because as public as he is, he does not live in a glass house. He can afford to be holier than thou, which is exactly what I have always said is the type of person who should be president.

Even I was a little surprised that Trump went after Huma Abedin, who is married to Anthony Weiner in a speech in Massachusetts. Abedin as it turns out is part of the Hillary Clinton email scandal so it was a topic that Trump had a right to expose—and he did it in a grand fashion that sounded just like something I’d write. And there it was on the front page of USA Today stated in a way that sounded like one of my articles. It was very refreshing because Trump continues to show that he isn’t afraid of any demons from his past coming out to expose him as a hypocrite, which is why he can call out so much bad behavior.

What a lot of people don’t understand about moral capital is that there is a good tactical reason not to get drunk or show other people in friendly settings your weaknesses. It came up with me while talking to a friend recently why I know so many people yet don’t maintain very many close personal relationships. The reason is that I don’t want to get too close. You don’t want to hesitate if you have to go after someone aggressively. You don’t want to not do something that’s right because you shared a sin with them at some point in the past. Getting drunk with someone or worse yet, getting stoned, dancing, and extrapolating sexual impositions all might make you hesitate later when you discover that you have to go after someone’s jugular for the sake of doing the right thing. I don’t have that burden, I don’t do bad things, I don’t open myself to weakness and share them with others so to make them not feel so bad about themselves. I often purposely use a ‘holier than thou’ moral position to get what I want from people who do live in glass houses and it gives perpetual leverage for attack if there comes a time where such things are needed. I always liked Donald Trump but I assumed that he lived a life where occasional drunkenness was shared with others and that he had a bit of a playboy lifestyle. As it turns out, he didn’t, and doesn’t. He’s just an overachiever who never has a motor that turns off, which I can relate to. But it also makes him free to go after true evils and to extrapolate from those perpetrators what he needs.

What Trump said about Anthony Weiner’s marriage to Huma Abedin has the Beltway terrified because it’s the first hint they have had at what a Trump in the White House would be like. If Trump wants a bill passed he’ll know who slept with whose wife, who solicited a prostitute on the previous Friday, who in congress is attending swinger parties, and who woke up on a Sunday morning in a park without their pants—and he’ll use that leverage to garner cooperation. He can, because he will make sure he always has the high moral ground over his rivals, and that makes him a very dangerous potential president. At the heart of inaction between Barack Obama and John Boehner is that they both love cigarettes—so they share that little sin together for the detriment of our country. As soon as Boehner won the speaker’s seat, Obama exposed that shared sin to his advantage and it has persisted to this day. Boehner lost his leverage on Capital Hill before he ever got started with the public knowledge of just a few sins that people want to keep buried in a closet.

Jessica Estepa who wrote the USA Today article about Trump and Weiner during the lonely hours of early August 29, 2015 was noticeably distraught by exposing Abedin in the way that the presidential candidate had in Massachusetts. After all, how many women in the world were just like Abedin, who were in bad marriages where their husbands were perpetual horn dogs cheating on them like there is no tomorrow. But they are too insecure with themselves to leave such bad men for better opportunities. So they take progressive political positions to justify their weaknesses. They might even walk on the wild side every now and then like getting drunk at a club and gang molested by strange people captured on hundreds of cell phones for all time to remember. They might cozy up with a lesbian politician who wants to be president herself and find solace as an abused woman with an older woman who has an equally slimy husband. Trump knows that secrets were shared, because that’s what people do, and he is using the situation to create leverage. That’s what you want out of a president. In a world of sin, which the Beltway is full of; put a man in the White House who refuses to commit sin so that he can maintain leverage over them for the good of strategic positioning and wonderful things can happen.

Trump’s candidacy is a dream come true for me for all those reasons and more. I can forgive issues from his past where he politically wavered just because I understand the importance of leverage in a society of evil and how valuable it is to club opponents over the head with their own misconduct to achieve strategic necessities. I don’t go “out with the guys” ever, for any reason. I go home to my wife every day and live my life cleanly on my terms.   I don’t share friendships with people for the benefit of the mutual keeping of secrets. And other than myself, I have never seen anyone similar such as Trump, let alone able to conduct himself on such a large national stage. I simply love it, because I know how powerful of a tool that behavior can be, and he will be able to use it, and appears extremely ready to perform the task in a way that has never been done before by anybody in a high office—in history. So I become more excited about a possible Trump presidency day by day—a run that will expose the buried bodies and illicit acts of corrupt politics for the betterment of our nation. And that is truly something to get excited about.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

A Gay, Black, Progressive Murderer: Where the blame for violence really belongs

So a gay, black man, built intellectually by a progressive society to believe he had been victimized—and oppressed by the dialogue of the day, committed an ultimately heinous crime. This is how MSN reported the incident which occurred during the day on 8/26 2015.

MONETA, Va. — The fatal shooting of a reporter and cameraman unfolded on live TV during the early morning show, as tens of thousands of viewers watched a horrified anchor struggle to comprehend what had happened.

Within hours, the carefully scripted carnage carried out by a disgruntled former colleague spread to millions of viewers gripped by what had transformed into a social media storm. The governor initially described a car chase on his weekly radio show, with police on the shooter’s tail on an interstate highway.

Then, social media posts referencing the slain TV pair surfaced on an account under an on-air pseudonym used by the gunman — culminating with a first-person video of the ambush filmed by the shooter.

The 56-second clip shows Vester Lee Flanagan II quietly approach WDBJ reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward, gun in hand, as they conduct an interview. But Ward’s camera was aimed at the mini-golf course nearby instead of the reporter. So the shooter waited, cursing Parker under his breath, for 20 seconds until the live television picture was back on the reporter. Then he fired eight shots without saying a word.

The attack seemed carefully planned. Flanagan was captured in a rental car he reserved at some point before the shootings; his own Mustang was found abandoned at the local airport, Franklin County Sheriff Bill Overton said. The interview was done at a shopping center not yet open for the day at a remote lake in Moneta, some 25 miles away from WDBJ’s studios in Roanoke. The station promoted where the reporter would be, including a plug on Twitter just a half hour before the shooting.

http://www.msn.com/?cobrand=lenovo13-comm.msn.com&ocid=LENDHP&pc=MALCJS

The shooting was an act of pure hatred and took viewers on a journey they were not quite ready for. It’s not often such evil is so obvious, and immediate. Flanagan had been told that the world would give him special privileges because of his skin color, and his sexual preference and at mid-life he finally discovered that people didn’t like him because he was just an asshole. It had nothing to do with who his parents were or where he likes to park his phallic intentions. He was a difficult personality who used race and sexuality to justify his vile hatred—and society allowed him to hide that anger behind a mask of progressivism. Society allowed him to not be accountable as an individual giving him a collective focus on social victimization, instead of forcing him to look at himself as a way to be better as a human being.

Immediately after the attack progressives of all shapes and sizes immediately called for more gun control with the same lunacy that they declare that black lives matter while also supporting Planned Parenthood abortions. The same society that would think it was marvelous to discover a single strain of bacteria on Mars as evidence of life, is the same that looks at the selling of aborted fetuses to research companies as hacked up body parts and declares that life begins at birth. Progressives just can’t take responsibility for anything. They created the murderer Vester Lee Flanagan II through policy and the first thing they want to legislate regarding his behavior is guns. What a shameful misdirection of responsibility.

Guns were illegal in France but that didn’t stop a radical Muslim extremist from trying to take over a train in Belgium all in the name of Allah. The only thing that stopped him was four brave passengers who overtook the threat with good ol’ fashioned bravado, something that isn’t being taught anymore to young people. France had already taken the steps of making guns illegal. All of Europe in fact is pretty much gun free where even the mere mention of a firearm is taboo, like saying a curse word in church. It’s just not something they do in progressive riddled Europe, yet a gunman still had a gun and was on a train ready to take lives until the unexpected happened. Four heroes stopped him with personal initiative.

Alison Parker’s father shouldn’t have been on camera talking so soon after his little girl had been shot dead by a cold-blooded killer. He shouldn’t have been talking to the governor, or the press. Yet he did, he was on with Megan Kelly that very night on Fox News speaking about more gun control! Amazing. I felt sorry for him, but then wondered how he was even able to talk about his daughter on such a public stage after such a grotesque murder. It was reckless to put him on the air—anywhere—and even worse for him to speak from a grieving heart. Yet the progressives were happy to use him to advance their gun grabbing agenda—immediately.

But the gun argument is just a diversion from the real problem—and that is the type of utopian society progressives have tried to build. Their values, such as the White House’s hiring of the first transgender employee, or the media obsession with Bruce Jenner’s freakish foray into womanhood—progressives advocate freakish behavior then wonder why the product of their philosophy explodes under the pressure of reality—which flies in the face of their decisions most of the time. One fine example is the progressive support of radical Islam while those same lunatics routinely abuse women and kill gays—just because they believe a book of religion told them they could commit those crimes. Progressives support evil in every form then feel they can preach to the rest of us how we should live and think. Embarrassingly, we are supposed to believe from them that gun control would help in some way when it clearly hasn’t worked in Chicago, or France. Bad guys still kill people. The only difference is that they knew that nobody would shoot back.

Vester Lee Flanagan II cursed Alison Parker’s name under his breath just moments before the shooting, it is a good bet he didn’t think any of the three people standing at the interview scene would have a gun to return fire. So his plan could be hatched without being foiled—much to his liking. In all reality, all three people should have been armed and ready to shoot back the instant there was an indication of violence. People in the vicinity should have also been armed. When they heard shots, they should have been ready to discover the trouble and had the weapons to put an end to it. But Vester was allowed to believe through his homosexual temperament and race baiting past that he’d be able to commit evil without ramification—so violence occurred on live television shocking the world—and the fault rests completely on progressive society.

The reason that progressives blame the gun is because the gun doesn’t look back at them in the mirror each day. It’s much harder to look at the real problem, and for progressives, it’s the society they have built for themselves. When they realize they can’t have the world they imagined they have nowhere to turn. Most of them turn toward drugs and alcohol hoping to numb the reality. But in extreme cases, such as with Vester Lee Flanagan II they intend to hurt those who won’t allow them to be parasitic victims of vile filth and debauchery. That’s when they lash out. And by that measure if insanity is a measurable criteria for Second Amendment participation, then gun control of the type Alison Parker’s father is proposing should be established based on whether or not a person is gay or a Democrat—and if they happen to be both, they should be on a watch list for the safety of us all. That is how you get to the heart of the problem.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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