Tag: Star Wars

The ‘Rogue One’ Review: A New Hope, not only for Star Wars, but the entire movie industry

For me it was an entirely magical experience.  I’ve always loved Star Wars, even though over the last few weeks I had been troubled with the makers at Lucasfilm who obviously were in despair that Donald Trump was the new President of the United States.  After a few weeks of “banter” it became obvious to me that the root of their problem was a regional one.  Lucasfilm is located in San Francisco at the old  Presido so their points of emphasis on all things political lean-to the left.  But prior to Rogue One being released on December 16th 2016 as the first standalone film to be presented in the Star Wars storyline I personally wished Chris Weitz and others at Lucasfilm luck with the opening because I felt that the direction of the series was growing up and going where George Lucas always intended—to be bigger than terrestrial politics and that this new film deserved fresh judgment.  Gareth Edwards as everyone who reads here knows, I think is a wonderful director—as assessed by the 2014 Godzilla film—so I was very eager to see Rogue One on opening night and once I had was met with a number of Star Wars characters in the lobby of my local theater just days before Christmas.  Outside of the Cobb Luxury Theater at Liberty Center, Ohio were brilliant Christmas lights lining the streets as Star Wars music blared from the park across the street in the harsh 20 degree cold.  A little Jawa and Imperial Trooper were outside adding to the excitement as seen in my Twitter update below from that moment.

Rogue One was a bold movie—certainly created by hard-core Star Wars fans and by committee which hurts it a little bit—but the love for the film by all those who made it was really a jaw dropping experience.  It was a fabulous film done with a classic Saturday morning serial style.  The title screen was very distracting at first because it was the first Star Wars film done without the crawl.  We’ve had seven Star Wars films with a grand opening followed by a crawl of text telling us where we were in the story and what was going on and with Rogue One, that was noticeably gone—on purpose.  It felt to me like this Star Wars movie was actually rebelling against our expectations to be its own thing even though by the ending it literally took us to the beginning of Episode IV the very first Star Wars movie from 1977.

I always wondered as a kid what that first major victory of the Rebellion was as mentioned in that text crawl and Rogue One nearly reflected my imagination remarkably well.  After all, A New Hope plunged us all into the middle of the story and we could only guess at the history of the situation based on what the characters told us about it.  The heroes of the Skywalker family and specifically Han Solo were larger than life manifestations of heroism propelled by unnerving optimism and that carried the saga into realms of mythology which has formed our society around philosophic concepts unparalleled in the history of storytelling.  Rogue One and the rebellion before those heroes entered the metaphorical stage noticeably is about average people daring to do extraordinary things under the collective assembly of a rebellion against the empire.  This was evident in the directorial approach of Rogue One which might have been tempted to retell a modern story with epic heroes which would continue on for generations—but instead they stuck to the mode of the story and the Michael Giacchino musical score never tried to outstrip the original John Williams score—even though I think he could compete with Williams if he wanted to.

One thing I know quite a lot about is John Williams music—I think I know every note from every film he’s ever done for every scene put to film.  I listen to John Williams music in my office almost every morning—it is my breakfast for starting a day and the music from A New Hope is so full and rich.  The themes for each character are so fleshed out and defined—it is an unquestioned masterpiece so it is quite a task to ask Michael Giacchino to step in with only about a month of time to score Rogue One which is a film designed to essentially be the first moments of A New Hope.  And the music has that rushed feel not in a bad way, but in the way of Rogue One itself—a band of incomplete and flawed people joining together in rebellion against a tyrannical empire also full of jaded and incomplete people not quite fleshed out as life forms to do battle on the epic planet of Scarif in a kind of grand crescendo.  I have listened very carefully to Michael Giacchino’s score and I think many of his tones are underplayed on purpose to be deliberately fleshed out in A New Hope as Luke Skywalker eventually enters the picture and finds his own guardian angel in the veritable Han Solo at the cantina in Mos Eisley space port.  That’s where the rebellion finally finds its true heroes which they can clip their star onto and finally overtake the empire in the movies we all know so well by now.  By the end of Rogue One the music coalesces into themes that sound nearly right out of the New Hope soundtrack.  Maybe that was on purpose, maybe it just took Giacchino time to find his Star Wars legs—but I think the small amount of time given to him was to evoke that kind of unorganized chaos that often happens with battle only to be brought to a finer point in movies we’ve already seen and that was quite brilliant.  In that way these standalone movies never have to be as good as George Lucas made the originals, or the John Williams music which accompanied our memories.  But the stories of how those events came to be are infinitely fascinating and in that regard Rogue One is a masterpiece of cinema.

Even bolder was the inclusion of old Star Wars characters who are either long passed from life on this earth or too old to ever possibly be seen again as a 19-year-old princess.  The decision to make lifelike full onscreen CGI characters in this day and age of 4K televisions was monstrously bold because every little flaw would be easy to detect.  But these makers of Rogue One had full scenes of the late Peter Cushing speaking to members of the empire under hard light and in close-up—which was bewildering.  Give the movie a standing ovation for not playing it safe.  And it works.  When Princess Leia speaks finally at the end for a brief second accompanied by the strings of Giacchino’s bold soundtrack I looked around me in the theater and there were tears streaming down the faces of the full crowd.  The audience looked as if they had Christmas lights on their faces which glittered in the reflection of the white interior of the Tantive IV—the ship which we first see at the start of A New Hope.  Then suddenly the film cut to credits not letting anybody linger in contemplation which gave the effect of wanting to see it again immediately.  This wasn’t just a movie, or a tip of the hat to a cinematic masterpiece—this was a bold rebellion of conventional cinema history declaring its independence to throw off convention and serve a timeless story with new installments to bridge mankind into the everlasting.

So dear reader, you might understand now the feeling I had when I shot that short video for the Twitter upload.  Until you’ve seen the movie, you won’t understand—it just sounds like music with some people dressed up in front of a movie theater.  But the unconscious connection that those characters had to our mood was very similar to that experience when you’re coming out of church after a particularly inspiring sermon to greet someone you otherwise wouldn’t talk to because you shared a common experience.  They understood how magical the movie was from behind their costumes and they could see the joy on our faces and they played right along.  Rogue One is a great movie without all those secondary considerations, but there is a magic to seeing one of these Star Wars movies on opening night as they now have such a hook into our human culture.  To make it better for me, my wife and I saw Rogue One at the Cinebistro and had a very nice dinner at the theater which I never get tired of.  So it was very nice that the theater management went to the extra step to bring in costumed Star Wars characters to patrol the lobby and had the foresight to set up a booth at the park pavilion at Liberty Center to blare Star Wars music down the street to mix with the Christmas festivities of Holiday shoppers vibrant on a cold December Friday evening.   Yes it was very magical.

I think those tears on the faces of the audience were of pure joy even though it was quite sad to see each member of the Rogue One team get picked apart by the ominous strength of imperial might.  The movie reminded me of The Magnificent Seven—the original starring Yul Brynner who were gunned down at the end trying to save the town.  But the film didn’t end there.  Getting those plans to Princess Leia was like a last-minute play in American football where the losing team had almost no chance of scoring an impossible needed touchdown as a superior opponent set up a tenacious defense.  It didn’t so much matter how many poor rebels were killed so long as before one died they handed the plans to the next so that they might just get the objective to the Tantive IV before Darth Vader killed them all.  The desperation was so evident and the end of the film felt the same as when a team goes into overtime in a football game—and at the end we’re not dealing with an outmatched opponent as we might have thought at the beginning, but two even teams about to do battle to the death in A New Hope (overtime).

I loved Rogue One, I’ll probably go see it many more times while at the theater and I will buy it on the first day its available on Blue-rey.  The film is a gift to the next generation.  My grandchildren will love these new Star Wars movies and I can clearly see the benefit of taking this series well into the future.  My wife and I did some Christmas shopping after the movie and sort of walked around sorting out our feelings about Rogue One.  One of my daughters called me to get my verdict of the film, as she and her husband had seen it already with an advance screening—and she was anxious about my opinions and wanted desperately to share her enthusiasm for the film.  She had to contain her feelings for our sake not to give anything away, and when she called, I was still in stoic mode.  I don’t get emotional about anything unless its extreme joy or anger—except for when I write.  So I mechanically went through the events of the movie with her that I liked, but didn’t come close to articulating the full impact of it until after I had slept on it.  That’s what kind of movie this is.  It’s a no brainer—everyone should see Rogue One.  It’s a special film for a special time and it not only leads to a classic story called A New Hope but it is in and of itself “a new hope” for the entire movie industry.  It’s a feat in and of itself that not only unites people of different political beliefs, world cultures, and young and old alike, but with our primordial past and the hope we all have to live free of tyranny against the natural inclinations by those whose faulty personal identifications seek to imprison us much like Galen Erso was.  That is after all the point of the movie.  Even under duress for his natural brilliance Galen Erso “rebelled” in the only way that he could and hoped that freedom would follow.  And in those tears in that audience I think that most people understood the situation that Galen was in—because in their lives—they are stuck in much the same scenario—thus the brilliance of cinema to reach our hearts in ways that no other mode can.  Rogue One does.  It wasn’t the best movie I’ve ever seen, but I’m a 50-year-old man.  For a lot of young people ages 4 through 15 though—this will be and it will become the standard they measure everything off of in the future.  And that is a very, very, very good thing.

Rich Hoffman

 

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10 Seconds of Sheer Bliss: ‘Star Wars’ transcending politics and the #dumpstarwars movement

Obviously, many of the makers of the new Star Wars film, Rogue One regionally identify with San Francisco politics, because after all, that is where George Lucas moved his Lucasfilm company just prior to selling his empire to Disney in 2012.  They are not Donald Trump fans and have foolishly engaged in a progressive campaign against the president-elect adopting the same slant as Saturday Night Live has—lampooning Trump and the supporters of the new rebellion in America which they’ve associated as racists, bigots, and homophobes.

Where they’ve gone wrong is in assuming—including Mark Hamill, (Luke Skywalker himself) is that the meaning of Star Wars was always about diversity and togetherness in a collective kind of ooze, as opposed to what the masses actually cleave to making it one of the most popular modern stories of all time.  They obviously don’t understand why Star Wars is successful, and they don’t necessarily need to so long as they stick to the formula that George Lucas started so many years ago.   Rogue One is a war movie inspired from the World War II era, and that involved European politics from a time when nations came together to combat the evil of Hitler—and that is a universal theme everyone can get behind.  I personally like Garth Edwards as a director—he did a great job on the recent Godzilla film, and now that I’ve heard the Michael Giacchino soundtrack for Rogue One, particularly the section shown below at the 1:40 mark, I am getting very excited for the new film.  I wish I could have an hour-long soundtrack of just that kind of music because it reflects how I personally think.  If you could put music to my way of thinking 24 hours a day seven days a week—it would sound like that—that’s it!

I’ve went to the trouble of warning these modern Star Wars makers, like the Rogue One writer, Chris Weitz to story group leader at Lucasfilm Pablo Hidalgo and the director of Episode 8 Rian Johnson through Twitter that they needed to can their opinions because they don’t understand Star Wars in an ethical way so far as it relates to the world outside of Lucasfilm—by way of its art.  I think they are too young and as natural second-handers to George Lucas, they don’t get the appeal because they live in a filmmaking bubble.  Even George Lucas didn’t understand it for most of his life—if he ever did.  In fact, Lucas may have only understood Star Wars after he survived the car crash that nearly killed him and ever since—he has been losing that understanding year by year.  As an artist, he tapped into something by accident and that became something that changed the world philosophically and when film industry employees seek to bring modern political meaning to Star Wars, they cheapen it.  For instance, as Chris Weitz stated about Trump supporters—foolishly—the empire from the Star Wars movies were racists white supremacists and that the villains from Rogue One were much like those who put the New York billionaire into the White House over the corrupt Hillary Clinton—whom many at Lucasfilm were openly supporting.  I reminded all those mentioned above that Finn was a black guy and that Captain Phasma was a woman and as my friend Matt Clark pointed out recently, all of the Clone Troopers were copied from the DNA of Jango Fett—who certainly wasn’t a “white guy.”  So I told Chris that if he thought that’s what made Rogue One tick as a movie—as the writer—then the film would likely suck.

http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-supporters-star-wars-rogue-one-boycott-2016-12

What those Lucasfilm employees obviously don’t understand is that most of the people I know who ran the Trump campaign on the ground level all loved Star Wars and that from their perspective the evil empire was the Democratic Party and the villains were clearly the Clintons.  The destruction of the second Death Star was election day 2016 and we celebrated by pulling down the statue of the evil empress Clinton in the city square of a metaphorical Coruscant.  So we are clearly at odds with each other and our definitions of things are defined by regional relationships—Lucasfilm by the progressive views of the coastal cities of New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles—and the Trump rebellion from the flyover states like Ohio, Georgia, Texas, Indiana and Michigan.  One thing that Star Wars taught me as a young person, which the modern Lucasfilm employees have not yet mastered is that the space opera is best defined on wings of art—the kind James Joyce participated in—which tapped into ancient roots of human experience and that it is there that the keys to understanding the power and success of Star Wars is best applied.

It was only because of Star Wars that I was inspired as a young twenty-something to read the great European classics like The Canterbury Tales and Finnegan’s Wake.  One of those is actually medieval literature while the other is an attempt at preservation of life before the Catholic takeover of Europe specifically in the British Isles.  Star Wars is all about that kind of thing mixed with oriental cultures.   Lucas properly took all of the world’s mythologies and placed them on an infinite tapestry of galactic magnitude and benefited it even more by setting the story long before our modern human history.  The genius of that was to remove the audience from the here and now and place it comfortably in the past so that reflection was possible without the immediacy of modern troubles.  So I literally have spent the last thirty years reading classic literature from around the world because I was inspired by Star Wars as a kid to do so—and I am far better off for it now.  With these new Star Wars films I am hopeful that the same thing happens to millions of other people over the coming decades because there is a real hope that I have that this art of Star Wars will carry mankind to a new level of understanding even in spite of Kathy Kennedy’s immediate desires to find female directors and stick progressive causes into Star Wars which rips the mind away from the transcendental nature which evokes the magic in the first place.  She and Lucasfilm in general understand I think enough to get by.

For instance, Rogue One is really a classic spin on an old World War II movie.  The upcoming Han Solo film which goes into production at the turn of the year 2017 has the art department looking at old Frederic Remington paintings to get the look of that movie to reflect a classic western, so these guys get it, and I look forward to seeing what they get up on the screen.  I understand that we will see a newer Millennium Falcon with some cool paint schemes on it, which will be wonderful as Han Solo is my favorite character.  He’s a very Ayn Rand type of hero.  I am so excited about that project that I’m planning to visit the studio where they are filming while they are there in the first quarter of 2017—because it’s wonderful as a work of art to see those types of elements being put together in something that will inspire the world.  I’m not saying anything more about the Millennium Falcon because it’s all kind of a secret and I respect that.  We’ll all see it soon enough.

The success of the new Han Solo movie will largely depend on how well Rogue One does, so I am rooting for the film to do well.  I won’t be boycotting Star Wars just because the filmmakers at Lucasfilm don’t understand the presidency or modern necessity of Donald Trump.  They’ll get it in hindsight, but if they don’t see it now—I won’t fault them for it.  They have an important job to do in my mind and they need to stick to it.  I will say that I am encouraged by what I’ve seen so far, like that Michael Giacchino film score, and the recent update to the video game Battlefront where there is a DLC featuring Rogue One events which came out this week.  I’ve been playing it and let me just say—it’s quite astonishing.  Additionally, this past week the new VR Mission for X-Wing came out on Playstation and it was jaw dropping cool.  The neatest video game experience I’ve ever had.  There isn’t even a close second and all this is a result of Star Wars newest film Rogue One which has resurrected the science and ambition those films evoked in the 1980s.  I never thought in my wildest imaginings that I’d be able to sit in the cockpit of an X-Wing Fighter and perform dogfighting with other ships around a massive Star Destroyer on the edge of an asteroid field in the most perfect 3D imagery I’ve ever seen.  I say that from the perspective of working with the RealD 3D guys back in 2008 when they were perfecting their cameras for the revolution we see now in movie theaters.  I can only imagine what kind of technical breakthroughs we will see over the next few years as Star Wars continues to inspire science and art to push human understanding and the Trump presidency opens up the purse strings of capitalism to make those ideas happen.  If everyone can’t yet see the big picture—I can deal with that.  But lack of vision doesn’t make people correct in their assumptions.  Chris would do his project and Lucasfilm a tremendous service if he’d just keep his mouth shut and do his job within that context.

Meanwhile I will be one of the first to see Rogue One.  I ordered the soundtrack from Michael Giacchino based exclusively on that clip.  I will now go listen to those few seconds of music at the 1:40 mark for the rest of the day because it’s that kind of thing which feeds my brain—which is my favorite part of my body—and it likes to eat.  Matt Clark and I are planning a Star Wars special on 1600 WAAM on New Year’s Eve and we’ll review the new Rogue One movie and elaborate on all these topics more, once we have had the benefit of seeing the movie and comparing it to the history of the franchise which are shaped in translation by the politics of our time.  So we’ll see.  I’m hopeful, but will reserve my judgment on the product presented.  And as of now, I’m enjoying the possibilities that come with Star Wars and the hope for the human race that often trails in its wake.  I will say this, thank you Michael for that 10 seconds of music shown in the Rogue One scoring session.  Because I love it!

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Star Wars Battlefront: A mythic jump into the future of the human race that is just jaw-dropping cool

It took my radio buddy Matt Clark from WAAM in Ann Arbor, Michigan a good part of 2016 to talk me into getting Star Wars: Battlefront for my PS4.  But after a lot of coaxing, by him, I finally did about six weeks ago.  The result after just that short duration of time—and granted I have very responsible social obligations so I can’t sit around playing games all day every day—but presently I’m well over 2 million points of online play and I just hit level 52 by Force Friday on September 30th which still gives me reasonable happiness and hope for the future of what has become one of the most important mythologies to our society in the history of the human race.  There is nothing like Star Wars really and now that I’ve played Battlefront a lot on PS4 and witnessed the new Deathstar expansion I have a few things to say that are extremely positive.  The game is simply jaw dropping in its scope, ambition, and graphic ambiance.  Even though I deal with a lot of very usual serious subject matters on this site, I often say that I vacation in the Star Wars universe as a stress management tool, and with Battlefront that has certainly been the case—so it’s OK to take a break to think about something fun.

As I’ve said before, I am a fan of the Star Wars miniatures game.  I wish I had more time to play it, but I think it is superior to Chess as a strategy game and is a real window into what can happen when the human imagination is unleashed through a powerful mythology like Star Wars.  For the last couple of weeks, billionaires on the cutting edge of tomorrow—like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk—have been discussing the opportunities for expanding the human race into our solar system, which I have been talking about for quite some time.  Where those two individuals are not aligned with a person like me politically, we do agree on human expansion into space, the development of new technologies, and expanding the reaches of our imaginations during the next century—and largely Star Wars has helped frame the thought in our generation to make possible the real science we are just beginning to see.  In fact, I was in a business meeting just yesterday—Force Friday—where the new Star Wars toys for the upcoming film Rogue One were released at Target—and the old timers in that meeting were astonished with the very real business results they had witnessed from my performance over the last two business quarters.  While I would never cheapen those efforts with a simple rationality by saying Star Wars was responsible—it did help shape my young mind into thinking big about things and conceiving of ideas that would later develop into quite beautiful ways of thinking—which Bezos and Musk are also utilizing.  When we were all kids, we played with the same toys and I can see the effect in a positive way that it’s had on our culture and the stuff that’s out now for kids is many times better—so I can only imagine what impact that will have on tomorrow’s children who will take what Musk and Bezos are saying today and make it happen tomorrow.  From that vantage point Star Wars can make you better, it can make you think better, act better, and provide mythic direction important to subconscious yearnings key to behaving as a functional adult.  By the high standards set by the orchestral Star Wars music in these movies and video games to the advent of various propulsion systems to make the ships fly, to the artificial intelligence represented in the various robots shown in the Star Wars mythology there is a lot of room to provoke thought in that science fiction, fantasy epic that I see dramatically expanding the consciousness of the human race.  Given that, I’ve told the story of how my wife and I took a few years and played Star Wars: The Old Republic online for nearly two full years—and had a lot of fun doing it.  So when I sat down and finally let myself play Battlefront by a joint partnership between the video game companies DICE and Electronic Arts I was more than a little astonished by the result.

The negatives for me in getting into it in the first place were that I didn’t want to play as an Imperial player—because I never play bad guys—in anything.  I don’t even let my mind go there and in the multiplayer mode of Battlefront they often queue you into both Imperial and Rebel players randomly.  During one game you play as a Rebel and in the next you’ll be an Imperial.  I had to find a way around that just to play Battlefront—and it’s a little bit of a pain in the ass—but the results have more than been worth it.  The other drawback for me was that there was not story mode in Battlefront.  It’s what they call a “sandbox” game where you just show up and play like you would on a playground—only this is quite literally set in the worlds of Star Wars.  I didn’t think that would be enough for me, but as it has turned out, I actually love the format.  Here’s why.

Back in the 90s—and I’ve told this story before a little bit—my favorite game was a space simulator called X-Wing based on the Star Wars missions from the original film.  It was a DOS based game and I played it religiously.  I simply loved it—still do actually.  I loved it so much that it has essentially become the measure of every game thereafter for me—because it did so many things well.  At that time my kids were babies and they learned about video games by watching me play that one, and I had a nephew I was very close with who was a little kid then and played it with me all night some nights, and we never forgot the experience.  It was certainly a very special game for a very special time and the contents of the experience would evoke great discussions between us that greatly enriched our lives even to this day many decades later.  So a great video game done right can have a wonderful impact on people—much greater than what a classic novel once had on our society—because the experience can be shared with other people.  There were a few more editions of that X-Wing game that came out in the late 90s as the Internet became more of a factor in computer use—which seems like an odd thing to say today—but back then the Internet was expensive and clunky, and wasn’t much good beyond communication through email and web browsing.  It couldn’t stream the amount of data that it takes now to play massive battles in high-definition between 60 players at a time like we can now see in Battlefront.  I remember being extremely impressed by the third X-Wing game, X–Wing vs Tie Fighter that allowed for online play against real life opponents which I was very interested in.  Because I wanted to test myself against other pilots around the world—I’ve always played combat simulations on computers—everything from Microsoft’s Flight Simulators which are very realistic to the old Dynamix World War II aerial combat sims, and X-Wing took the realistic stalls out of the mix common to old propeller driven planes but kept the classic dog fighting elements which was a marriage of two styles of fighter combat that was very enjoyable.  X-Wing fighters were like the old World War II warbirds—such as the P-40 and the P-51, but they had technology that was ahead of our time such as shielding and hyperspace travel which puts your mind onto ideas which force it to lean into the future just to bring all those elements together—which is the correct function of a proper mythology.  Over time a few games have come and gone that I was impressed with—most recently the Old Republic version of its starfighter gameplay where online matches were something I did religiously for about a year—but none of them really got to the meat of what I liked about the original X-Wing where you had to take on massive squads of Tie Fighters, take down Star Destroyers and really challenge yourself to fulfill the mission parameters.  Some of those missions were quite challenging—tactically.  Of course I’m a huge believer that once you work out things in your mind—even on a simulator—then you can achieve it in reality because honestly the mind doesn’t know the difference.  Reason can tell the difference, but the process of thought works whether what you’re doing is real or fantasy.  So I think video game play can be very healthy for producing positive thought.

With that context explained I finally purchased Battlefront after Matt Clark sent me a series of texts over the course of about six months coaxing me into playing online with him.  I was busy at the time and playing the Uncharted series, so I didn’t have time for one more thing.  But when I had an open window to do it, I did and I was amazed at what I had been missing.  My favorite mode in the Battlefront sandbox is Fighter Squadron which is essentially a modern update to the old X-Wing game and once I realized that, I was off to the races.  Quickly I was able to hold my own against even the most experienced players averaging 20 to 40 kills per match—which is pretty high.  The graphics are incredible, the frame rates astonishing—the scope of the battles simply unfathomable even to my most fantastic imaginings of two decades ago.  If that was all there was—I would have been happy.  But that’s only the tip of the ice berg.  There are in fact too many things to talk about in how cool Battlefront is, but really the most telling essence of the game is probably the Walker Assault mode which to me is a really fancy version of the old Atari 2600 game Empire Strikes Back where Imperial Walkers threaten to get to your power generator and you have to fly around and shoot each one of them 48 times to kill them before they reach their objective.  As a thirteen year old kid, I was good at that game—which was a take on the classic Defender video game I played a lot in the old arcades.  But on Battlefront the game mechanics are photo realistic, especially on the Endor modes where the Imperial Walker trounces down a creek bed through a dense forest and you have to bring it down before it gets to your troop transport.  The leaves on the trees are extremely detailed.  There are clouds of mist in the forest as well as insects—the amount of programming to pull off all those elements is insane and I often find myself just staring at the screen wondering if it’s all real or not.  It is crazy ambitious and cool beyond lunacy.  Simply jaw dropping to a guy like me who has watched all these video games evolve over the years into what I am seeing now with Battlefront is inspiring.

It was only a few years ago that I was so excited about the video game Battlepod which came out as a Dave & Busters exclusive from Lucasfilm.  That year my family celebrated my birthday there so we could all play it together.  I thought the graphics on that were spectacular.  But now, after playing Battlefront a lot, I recently went to the Main Event in West Chester where my oldest grandson is now discovering Star Wars for his first time.  He had been watching me play Battlefront for countless hours so he saw the Battlepod game so we played it.  He loved it, but to me it looked clunky and old because my eyes had adjusted to the realities of Battlefront and a few years ago I didn’t think that would be possible.

As I’ve said, I’ve been busy so I kept my experiences with Battlefront to myself for the most part.  There are after all a lot of things going on in the world, and I’m playing my part in a lot of them.  But then Battlefront released its Deathstar update a week ago with the promise to release a Rogue One expansion by the end of the year and suddenly I found myself overwhelmed with the sheer coolness of the Battlefront game.  Finally in real-time you can do battle with live players all over the world around Star Destroyer capital ships, and bring them down fulfilling tactical objectives and really do things that the original movies could only dream of as far as graphics and coverage and I have found my enthusiasm bulging ready to explode with excitement.  Star Wars: Battlefront is a really cool game in every respect.  It is simply astonishing.  In a lot of ways it has healed my hatred of Star Wars that I felt after watching The Force Awakens because through the games I see a bigger picture coming into frame—one that is carrying a new kind of mythology directly to the minds of so many millions of people and connecting them in ways that were only fantasy a short time ago in a galaxy that now seems far away—only it wasn’t.

I have to thank Matt Clark for his persistence.  If not for him I probably wouldn’t have even picked up the title and I would be missing out.  But because of him, I have a front seat onto something truly special that a lot of people who grew up recently don’t have a proper context into just how amazing it really is.  For the first time in a long time I have hope in what this very important mythological tool will unlock regarding the future of the human race and our eventual expansion into space—and beyond.  It all starts with a thought and Star Wars: Battlefront makes thinking beyond our terrestrial limits commonplace in a world brought to us by movies, but made real through virtual reality.  And more than anything I shudder at the day where I think of Battlefront with the same disappointment that I know look at Battlepod because the new edition is so much better.  Because for me it is hard to imagine how a game could be any better than what Battlefront really is—yet I am excited to see how they will be.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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I Am So Proud of Donald Trump: Calling for an end to drug cartels while standing on Mexican soil

Literally I have waited my whole life to hear the speech that Donald Trump gave in Mexico next to their president, where he openly called for an end to the drug cartels.  Of course I have been a Trump supporter from the beginning and I try to be as involved in everything Trump as I can.  I have yard signs from the primary campaign that I still use.  But after that speech in Mexico I literally stopped what I was doing and went down to the West Chester, Ohio “Trump” store on Cincinnati Dayton Road in Old West Chester and picked up a new Trump sign for my yard.  As readers here know, I hate drugs.  I hate drug dealers.  I hate users.  I hate people who promote drugs and even wear cloths making drugs look cool.  The most despised symbol to me in the entire world—except for the “peace sign” is a marijuana leaf.  I absolutely hate everything there is about illegal drugs—and I always have.  I think I was born that way.  At no point in my entire life were drugs appealing to me.  I don’t even like legal drugs, like alcohol and aspirins.   So Trump’s bold speech in front of the Mexican people calling for an end to drug cartels and the crimes that are part of their culture—my respect for Donald Trump increased magnanimously.  If this isn’t your presidential pick in November—then you are part of the problem.

Nice job team Trump.  It was a bold move and victory belongs to those with enough valor to seize the day, and in Mexico, Donald Trump certainly did!  I am very proud today to be a Trump supporter.

Vicente Fox, the former president of Mexico helped make those cartels so powerful, and he was obviously jostled by Trump’s visit.  Hillary Clinton equally was shamed by Trump’s trip to Mexico.  Already she is playing from behind.  All these facilitators of criminal behavior are worried, because they simply can’t compete with a man who can fly to Mexico in his private 757 and tell the world something nobody else anywhere would dare say for fear of assassination, then give a major speech in Arizona just a few hours later and still be home at the end of the night to sleep in his own bed.  Trump is a real danger to those vile forces because he comes to the job of president with all the money and power in the world—and he doesn’t need politics to make him that way.  That’s why he can say the things he does, and that’s why I simply love the man.  What he has to give America is something it’s never had, and I am eager to see it.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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The Good Old Star Wars as Opposed to the New: Battlefront and the new stepdad

I was with a VIP catching a flight at O’Hara International Airport toward a destination that would take me along the coast of Russia and a spit in the wind from North Korea when I was asked about my thoughts on The Force Awakens, the Star Wars movie Matt Clark and I had brutally reviewed on his radio program just a few weeks prior.  CLICK TO REVIEW.  Along the concourse that headed toward the big oversea flights was a lit up advertisement for the new Star Wars movie and the man with me knew I liked Star Wars and wanted a referral.  I pointed him to the podcast of the WAAM radio show which he could download before we took off on what would be a very long flight because I didn’t really want to talk about it more than I had on that broadcast.  Star Wars was always something my family enjoyed together and this new generation felt like a family with a new step dad in it that wanted to replace our old dad.  The new dad was much more progressive than the old traditional dad and I found I didn’t like him, even though he was full of good intentions.  They were intentions that didn’t feel conducive to what Star Wars meant to my family—so I put it out of my mind.

As I sat with that VIP at a bar having a 9:30 AM beer and some nachos we looked through the big window onto our big 747 that was being prepped for our journey and he thought it was funny that probably for the first time in my life, I didn’t want to talk about Star Wars or the importance of its mythology upon the world stage, which I tend to do.  Our conversation drifted off onto other things happening at that time, the NFL playoffs, whether or not Trump would make the Republican nomination, and the goals of our travels.  But lingering in my mind was that bad feeling about the direction Star Wars was taking—a much more Huffington Post—Star Wars, as opposed to the dystopian THX-1138 version that I feel in love with as a kid—the small government, pro-freedom imagination fueling engine that really changed science, mechanical engineering, and philosophy for the human race under the guidance of George Lucas.  For kids, Star Wars was great because it combined two of their favorite things—guns, and cool machines into one movie.

The new Star Wars writers, directors, and producers were more concerned about social inclusiveness—ethnic diversity, sexual empowerment, and a hippie like love of the “Force” than the hot rod inspired George Lucas had been as a former race car driver who took his love of mechanics and applied them directly to an unlimited free market tapestry of a galaxy functioning as a Laissez-faire capitalist bastion which was carrying that society toward a type two evolutionary threshold.  After all, that was what made the original trilogy such a tragedy was that the oppressive Empire was seeking to control the entire galaxy from a central government through force.  Even as George Lucas become more progressive the older he became, that original essence stayed with him on every Star Wars project he worked on through The Clone Wars animated series.  Noticeably in the Rebels television show and now with The Force Awakens, it was obvious to me that George Lucas wasn’t calling the shots anymore, it was now a bunch of progressive San Francisco residents with body piercings and tattoos who had much different values in life than I had, and it bothered me.  It was like our metaphorical mother—Star Wars—had married an old hippie with a bald head except for a long ponytail of fringed gray hair stained with the smell of pot smoke informed us that he was our new dad—and I didn’t like him.

I didn’t have a history with this new dad.  I did with the old one, I had read every book, every comic and followed most everything that happened in the Star Wars storyline for thirty years and now this new dad was throwing out a bunch of stuff that reminded him of the old dad so that he could have sex with our mom and not think of what was there before him.  For me the final straw was when Disney tossed out the expanded universe books which my wife and I had read for two decades and proposed that their future stories would “borrow” from those books, but that from now on, the new dad would be calling all the story shots—which was noticeably less exciting and filled with original thoughts.  This new dad was not better than the old dad—he was different—and I have been rejecting him.

About a month before The Force Awakens came out the videogame Battlefront was released to the PlayStation 4 counsel and it was reportedly a dream for Star Wars fans.  I love Star Wars games for all the reasons little kids love the movies and toys—because there is a lot of energy, strategy, and imagination in them which I find is like a personal vacation for me to visit those places to step out of the daily pressures of my life—it has become for me kind of stress management.  I enjoy visiting big concepts in that boundless universe–conceptually.  Star Wars has always given me hope that mankind can step away from the limitations of our past into a future full of opportunity.  The games always make it easy to visit that world—especially through the Fantasy Flight Games products and the video games that have been produced over the years.  But with Battlefront, I wasn’t sure I was going to accept this new dad in Star Wars who was throwing out all the things I had spent time getting to know over several decades.  So even though my kids, and Matt Clark along with many others were pushing me to get the new Battlefront game so they could play it with me online—I was being very stubborn about it.

Shortly after that oversea trip my wife and I bought a next generation entertainment system with a 4k 70” television that is as crystal clear as anything I’ve ever seen.  Since we’ve had it we have purposely watched anything filmed or created to fulfill the market parameters of the 4K technology except the new Star Wars products.  I didn’t buy The Force Awakens at first when it came out on Blue Rey, I gave up on the Rebels television show, and I refused to buy Battlefront even when our television salesman offered to give it to me for free for spending so much money with him.   I said no because I didn’t want to deal with the new ponytail hippie dad that Star Wars had become to me.

After a few months of dancing around the issue the news that Battlefront was releasing a VR experience for on their upcoming PlayStation VR system made me look seriously at what was going on with Star Wars Battlefront.  I had already become used to what the 4K television experience could provide and I consumed all the media I could without any of it being Star Wars—but finally knowing that I was going to participate in the VR PlayStation release, I decided I wanted to pick it up Battlefront and learn to play.  Softening my position on Star Wars also was my grandson who has discovered all my old collectibles that I have from nearly four decades ago, and they are his favorite toys to play with bridging generations with some common ground to work with.  So I purchased the game and was just a little blown away by the experience.

I last remembered Battlefront 2 on the old Xbox so it’s been about five years since I really paid attention to what’s going on in the platform video game market.  As I have said before, my wife and I played The Old Republic online for a few years and I have been into the Fantasy Flight Games tabletop releases—so I haven’t had much time for other things.  I have a busy enough life; I have to pick my leisure events carefully.  So I never picked up a PlayStation 3, as I stated when recently discussing the Uncharted games.  I went from watching the PS2 graphics to essentially the latest and greatest in PS4—which is essentially 7 years of technical development.  I really never thought a game like Battlefront would have been possible.  Some of the levels such as the ATAT Attack in the Endor forest where an All Terrain Armored Transport makes its way down a creek bed to destroy a Rebel Transport before it can take off complete with rich vegetation, slowing running water and insects flying around were simply astounding—bewildering good graphically.  Then there was a moment at the Rebel Depot where a Millennium Falcon was sitting in a hanger and the battle takes place around it where I had to catch my breath and just think how cool that ship was sitting there.  The vehicle was nearly photorealistic and was something that was a childhood dream for me.  Essentially, after those two battle modes my position on Star Wars softened a lot.  Not completely, but I found enough value in those experiences to heal some of the betrayal I felt for the abandonment of the Extended Universe to essentially reboot for a new generation that was noticeably much more politically progressive.  Yet what I was seeing on Battlefront was something I observed on the multiplayer modes of Uncharted, a very laissez-faire capitalist economy that rewards the best and most hard working and provides equal opportunity for everyone who wants to be the best they can be.  That is why I found myself enjoying that environment and seeing a new level of benefit in the Star Wars franchise that certainly wasn’t available when I was a kid.  It’s not just about movies anymore, but the extended experience that takes place in our everyday lives.

My favorite mode is Fighter Squadron where players can fly Star Wars ships in combat over ground targets, through smoke, clouds and vicious firefights.  Graphically, everything is very photorealistic. It reminded me of the countless flight simulators I’ve played over the years—but it was by far the best.  It didn’t take me long before I was flying against other people—many who seem to always be playing the game 24 hours a day—and I was on the top of the leaderboard with 34 ships shot down in one match and I was only a level 11 at the time.  It was a lot of fun for me to get into something that was so familiar, yet so new and polished that I saw the great benefit that was happening intellectually, and philosophically.  As I was shooting down other pilots from all over the world at 4 AM in the morning with a vicious firefight that only history pointed to as a similar experience, and I noticed how some players tagged onto my wing to provide assistance without being asked and people were working together to achieve objectives because it was in everyone’s best interest to do so—I saw many good things happening to people that they aren’t learning in school.  Thinking of the other players online with me, some who were very good showed that a new evolution was clearly taking place and it was a global phenomenon which transcended traditional political parameters—and it centered on laissez-faire capitalism as a foundation.  Video games by their very nature are very free market entertainment options, and based on the behavior of that very vibrant world, it was working and people were enjoying it in every time zone on earth—together.  A lot of people have come to take this kind of thing for granted, but for me, it wasn’t that long ago where I was on the Spaceship Earth ride at Epcot Center in 2003 when my daughters and I first learned about the possibility of global communication through web browsers.  I think at that time we still had to pay a usage fee for internet use.  Gaming with all the information that travels over the various internet connections involves a tremendous amount of information that a 4K 70-inch television that can be bought at Costco for the price of a house payment, can show.  I wouldn’t say that I’m old, but I certainly have had a front row seat to all this development both on the Star Wars front, and on the technological part—and the mythology, and the philosophy of economy was certainly inspiring.

It doesn’t feel like it was that long ago that I was playing the very first computer game, X-Wing which was a DOS based game which came out in 1993.  In 1994 I bought my very first powerful PC which could play the game, and I was in love with it—I really never forgot the experience.   I stayed up many nights playing it with my nephews and we had likely some of the best times of our lives with that game and some of its sequels which started toying with the idea of online play which was attractive to us since they lived in Florida at that time.  But it was nothing like the smoothness of Battlefront—so I was a little bit enchanted with my experience and maybe not so critical of the new step dad.  I don’t think the new makers of Star Wars are even close to being able to make movies as original as George Lucas did.  At best, they may copy elements of the original series and the films will be enjoyable.  But if that’s the best that we get, it’s still a lot more than a world without Star Wars—which is changing the philosophy of the human race a little bit each and every day in a positive way.

Star Wars Battlefront is just one online experience—there are in fact hundreds of possible titles all fighting for attention in a very exciting marketplace.  Battlefront has the advantage of being associated with a popular space saga that has already captured the imaginations of several generations and speaks a universal language that transcends established trends, even religion—which is why to me it is such a nice vacation for my mind.  When time prevents a real vacation, I have for years vacationed in the world of Star Wars and enjoyed it for all that it brings—primarily the fighting and hot rod space ships.  For others, they like the philosophy of the Force.  For me, that is too much kid’s stuff.  I like the strategic combat that is involved in the wars of that galaxy far, far away.  I’m not ready to give the step dad a hug, but I’m at the point where I might not leave the room.  We’ll see how good the new Rogue One movie is.  That will decide a lot.  But for now, Battlefront was just spectacular and a real treat of a sandbox video game that I found I liked a lot more than I would have thought.  I not only enjoyed it for what it is—a technical marvel, but for the evolution of philosophy that it offers players on such a grand scale.  There are some very special things going on in that gaming industry and it is fun for me to not only watch, but to participate in.  I enjoy sharing those experiences with my kids, people like Matt Clark, and even my grandson who spent most of the weekend mesmerized by the images on the screen.  I have gotten used to the big television now, but to him it was like looking into another bright world full of energy and excitement.  It was fun for me to just see the excitement coming from him.  So in that regard, I’m liking Star Wars again.  Hopefully the people at Lucasfilm and Disney don’t screw it up any further.  Because there is an opportunity here to do something very special—and I hope they don’t blow it.  If Battlefront is a sign of things to come—that looks to be a concern I don’t need to have.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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How to Help Donald Trump in Ohio: Walking, knocking on doors and fighting a vile evil unleashed by diabolical Democrats

 For those in the media who keep their ears to the tracks of my writings for a whisper of happenings coming and going–of trends not yet realized so that forecasts to the winds can be witnessed a fraction of a second ahead of the competition, this posting is primarily for them.  If you want a good political story in Ohio, be at any of the below locations-and you will see a hint of what’s really going on in America’s heartland.    The below message is from the Trump Ohio campaign.  Robert Scott is doing a great job, and things are just getting started.

Ohio Trump-Pence Victory is rolling in the Buckeye State and we will be participating in the National Day of Action. We will be Walking and knocking doors THIS SATURDAY, AUGUST 20 at various locations throughout Ohio. Please click the link to sign up for the nearest location or where you would like to walk tomorrow:

 

County Time Link
Allen 1:00 PM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/super-saturday-allen-county-tickets-27046067516
Butler 9:30 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/make-america-great-again-national-day-of-action-butler-county-tickets-27047907018
Butler 9:30 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/make-america-great-again-national-day-of-action-west-chester-tickets-27057587974
Clermont 9:00 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/make-america-great-again-national-day-of-action-clermont-county-tickets-27054498734
Clinton 12:30 PM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/make-america-great-again-national-day-of-action-tickets-27057551866?utm-medium=discovery&utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-source=strongmail&utm-term=listing
Cuyahoga 9:00 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/national-day-of-action-for-donald-trump-westlake-tickets-27069467506
Cuyahoga 9:30 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/national-day-of-action-for-donald-trump-rocky-river-tickets-27063487620
Cuyahoga 9:30 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/national-day-of-action-for-donald-trump-brecksville-tickets-27063333158
Fairfield 9:00 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/make-america-great-again-national-day-of-action-lancaster-morning-tickets-27049325260
Fairfield 3:00 PM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/make-america-great-again-national-day-of-action-lancaster-afternoon-tickets-27054592013
Fairfield 9:00 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/make-america-great-again-national-day-of-action-pickerington-tickets-27049985234
Franklin 10:00 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/national-day-of-action-tickets-27059998183
Geauga 10:00 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/geauga-county-trumprepublican-national-day-of-action-tickets-27059989156
Guernsey 10:00 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/make-america-great-again-national-day-of-action-cambridge-tickets-27049133687
Hamilton 9:30 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/make-america-great-again-national-day-of-action-cincinnati-east-side-tickets-27047143735
Hamilton 9:30 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/make-america-great-again-national-day-of-action-cincinnati-west-side-tickets-27015392767
Highland 9:00 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/make-america-great-again-national-day-of-action-tickets-27057218870
Lake 9:00 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/national-day-of-action-in-lake-county-tickets-27060535791
Licking 9:00 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/make-america-great-again-national-day-of-action-newark-morning-tickets-27051771577
Licking 3:00 PM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/make-america-great-again-national-day-of-action-newark-afternoon-tickets-27054745472
Licking 9:00 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/make-america-great-again-national-day-of-action-reynoldsburg-tickets-27054085498
Lucas 10:00 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/super-saturday-lucas-county-tickets-27046275137
Mahoning 9:00 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/door-knocking-for-donald-trump-tickets-26826428570
Marion 9:30 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/doors4donald-tickets-27082190561
Medina 9:30 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/national-day-of-action-for-donald-trump-medina-tickets-27063616004
Miami 9:30 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/make-america-great-again-national-day-of-action-tickets-27074734259
Montgomery 10:00 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/make-america-great-again-national-day-of-action-tickets-27047356371
Montgomery 9:30 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/make-america-great-again-national-day-of-action-tickets-27076449389
Muskingum 9:00 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/national-day-of-actionmaking-america-great-again-tickets-27047869907
Ottawa 9:30 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/doors4donald-tickets-27081842520
Ottawa 9:30 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/doors4donald-tickets-27082058165
Pickaway 9:00 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/make-america-great-again-national-day-of-action-circleville-tickets-27049278119
Pike 9:00 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/make-america-great-again-national-day-of-action-piketon-tickets-27049054450
Portage 10:00 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/portage-county-trumprepublican-national-day-of-action-tickets-27059973108
Ross 9:00 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/make-america-great-again-national-day-of-action-chillicothe-morning-tickets-27049160768
Ross 3:00 PM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/make-america-great-again-national-day-of-action-chillicothe-afternoon-tickets-27054680277
Sandusky 9:30 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/doors4donald-tickets-27081938808
Scioto 9:00 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/make-america-great-again-national-day-of-action-portsmouth-morning-tickets-27046599106
Scioto 3:00 PM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/make-america-great-again-national-day-of-action-portsmouth-afternoon-tickets-27054898931
Stark 9:00 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/national-day-of-action-in-stark-county-tickets-27060118543
Summit 9:00 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/national-day-of-action-for-trumprepublicans-in-summit-county-tickets-27060195774
Washington 9:00 AM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/make-america-great-again-national-day-of-action-marietta-tickets-27053639163

With your help we will Make America Great Again!
LIKE OUR OFFICIAL FACEBOOK PAGE: OHIO FOR DONALD TRUMP – click here

Robert Scott
Deputy State Director for Ohio
Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.
@robertscott3

Rich Hoffman

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More Wikileaks Troubles for the Democrats: Even ABC News can’t ignore this one

How stupid are the Democrats?  Well, they have a difficulty doing the easy things correctly, and completely ignore the hard stuff—because as a party they lack the skills and leadership to conduct themselves properly.  The only thing they are good at is creating celebrity and charging premium money to raise money for their war chests, which is what the latest round from Wikileaks revealed.  Not even ABC News could sit on this story because it is just so embarrassing for the Democrats.  Watch it here.

I can’t say that the other side doesn’t do similar things.  I have been a part of that world a little bit.  Recently Donald Trump came to town and it cost a sizable amount of money to have dinner with him and I was able to see that close up.  I occasionally get invited to some of these VIP events, and I enjoy them from the perspective of philosophy.  In Trump’s case, it was obvious that he felt uncomfortable with the arrangement—but had come to the conclusion that to a certain extent, this is how the game is played in politics.  With Trump, he genuinely looked hungry to change that system—because the pay to play system is part of what makes politics so despicable.  Once Trump makes the money through fundraising that the Republicans need to hold their seats in the house and senate, he won’t be selling celebrity the way that the Democrats have been caught doing.  He doesn’t need to.

What’s so embarrassing for the Democrats is that they champion themselves as socialist advocates for the poor, but what the recordings show is that they sell access to the largest contributors and they really don’t care about people with hard luck.  I can honestly say because of some of my VIP experiences with Republicans that it’s not the same way with them.  The big difference I think is that most of the people who are Republicans are self-made people who have the type of money to be VIPs.  With Democrats, they tend to have old money, or “lottery money” fueling their efforts—like Hollywood actors, and those who have fallen into financial resources by luck.  So they are quicker and more eager to throw it away on the celebrity of a dinner with Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama than Republicans are.  With Republicans the pitch is obviously different—but the effort is disgusting in all of politics and needs to be changed.  That change will never happen under Hillary Clinton.  Under Trump, likely, because he already has all that financial celebrity—meeting him first hand I can say that he doesn’t like that pay to play system of what is supposed to be a representative government. But the Democrats, they love that system because it gives them a value for their lives that they don’t have naturally—and it’s a tremendous ego boost—allowing them to believe they are more valuable than they really are.

That is largely the reason why Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are tone-deaf to the world around them because what they see often are people spending small fortunes just to meet them.  That is the tremendous downside to these Wikileak recordings and why it’s so embarrassing for them.  And for the system to change, you’ll never get that out of the biggest perpetrators of that exploitation.  You have to do something different, and for a change, the Republicans are leading the way.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Annie Oakley 2016: Gery Deer on Living Dayton talking about 14 years of Western Arts Showcasing in Ohio

It’s that time again, and I always enjoy this event—it’s the Annie Oakley Western Showcase.  My good friend Gery Deer did a nice television spot for it on Living Dayton which can be seen below.  I do get involved in a lot of things, I am a professional international manager, a writer, a political “strategist, a new gunfighter (my times are getting there), a big time family man, a videotographer at times, but more than anything I am a bullwhip artist and have spent the last 14 years with Gery Deer helping with the Annie Oakley Days in Greenville, Ohio.   Here is a clip of my performance from 2014 at the Speed Switch competition.

Gery used some of my footage from a recent Western Showcase and the footage looked good spliced in with the live video.  I mainly do the videotography stuff as a side passion—because I make a lot more money at other things.  But I am proud to see some of those skills put to good use.  I tend to get shots that nobody else does, because as an occasional Wild West performer, I know exactly where the knives, hatchets and whips will be, so I can stick my camera in those tough places.  And that made the following clip a bit exceptional.

For those who would like to go, it’s this coming Saturday, 7/30, 2016.  The whip contests are at 1 PM.  Of course I’ll be there—I always am.  It is something that I enjoy a lot and is always a reminder of what America is all about—and I love it.  To find our arena, just listen for the whip cracks.  You can’t miss it.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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James Comey’s Testimony: The most important aspect of determining “intent” and the neglect of FBI prosecution

Watching the special session of congressional investigation into the James Comey FBI ruling on the Hillary Clinton email problems the essence is this—Comey felt that the Attorney General history over 99 years of patterned behavior that a case of this nature would not have been taken under the presumption of “intent.”  Everything else said is irrelevant.  It was obvious that Comey felt that Clinton had done a bad job of protecting her secure emails as Secretary of State and that she seriously jeopardized her credibility. Yet he did not advance the recommendation of prosecution because he felt the case was too flimsy for an AG at a Department of Justice to proceed with.

Here’s the problem with Comey’s statement—attorney generals are extremely political so their prosecution ratios if the charges are leveled toward characters on their political side of the aisle are of course extremely poor.  It is no surprise that Comey made the political calculation that his case was not strong enough to by-pass the politics of the AG, Loretta Lynch.  Yet, on Friday, July 1st Loretta Lynch under pressure from the disgrace of her meeting with Bill Clinton—Hillary’s husband—she stated clearly that she would accept any recommendation that the FBI proposed.  So it goes on July 5th 2016 James Comey held a press conference stating that the FBI would not bring charges against Hillary Clinton because they could not prove that she “intended” to break the law.  (Because all that evidence had been destroyed by Hillary’s team of lawyers)

When pressed by the congressional investigation specially held under an emergency session on July 7th 2016 however, Comey fell on the historical tendency of prosecution under the DOJ over a long period of time as the reason he did not recommend prosecution—even though Loretta Lynch already stated that she would proceed.  So there was no question that the Department of Justice would proceed with the case which is contrary to Comey’s statements defending his position.  That is the key to this case.  Comey in spite of all his declarations about the importance of his integrity lied about his reasons for not moving forward with the prosecution.  The DOJ would have had no choice but to pursue the case because Bill and Loretta Lynch got caught together in an inappropriate way.

Hey, how do I know these things you ask?  Well, I recently stayed at a Holiday Inn Express.  I’ve read a little law and I deal with lawyers more than I’d care to.  Gotta’ watch how they twist the meanings of words.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

Larry Nichols Opinion on the Clinton/Lynch Meeting: Putting it on paper to avoid criminal prosecution

Alex Jones often gets tossed into the conspiracy theory category by his enemies, which he often solidifies by being too emotional about issues.  However, he does hit journalistic stories honestly and the way the 1st Amendment was intended which makes him a breath of fresh air regarding the Hillary Clinton grip on the media that she dominates to protect her many illegal activities during a lustful lifelong climb toward power.   His Friday July 1st 2016 show was particularly good involving the criminal nature of the most recent Hillary Clinton case.  For those wondering what all the fuss is about regarding the attempted secret meeting between Attorney General Lynch and Hillary’s husband Bill Clinton the below video will educate you vastly.

One of the most interesting aspects of the video was the interview with Larry Nichols who used to work for the Clintons and knows how they operate.  In a lot of ways he helped write the playbook of their criminal lives, so he is best positioned to describe what the content of the meeting between Lynch and Clinton entailed.  In essence, Larry suggested that the Clintons had dug up dirt on the FBI investigators which were put on the Hillary Clinton case because they had weaknesses that would be easy to exploit later and Bill had put those on a paper for his former appointee to use to get his wife out of the detrimental email investigation which would threaten her run for president.  In exchange, Loretta Elizabeth Lynch would gain a continuation of her job as Attorney General during the Hillary Clinton presidency.  Of course none of this was said through any electronic exchange and no words were spoken for even them to hear.  The paper was burnt after it was shown to Loretta giving both Bill and the AG deniability of evidence in the future.  Sure it was all illegal, but these are the people who make the law—so they figure they can do whatever they want—the old Marxist motto—“the end justifies the means” was never truer with these bad people.

These are criminals running for office and they need to be stopped hopefully with an election, but if that doesn’t work, then other means will become necessary.  These are bad people and they belong in jail.  If you watch the whole Alex Jones episode, you’ll learn facts about this case that nobody else is covering.  So learn what you can and pass it to a friend.  Alex is the leader of the Hillary for Prison movement, and he is one of the few in the media gutsy enough to take on the Clinton machine.  He deserves the credit for some good work done to educate the public about the menace that is Hillary Clinton.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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