Tag: State Soverignty

Why Donald Trump will be Great as President: Mankind is growing but the #NEVERTRUMPs are missing a few screws

I wasn’t going to say much about it, but now that Donald Trump is the Republican Party nominee and tempers have abated a bit, proper analysis can finally be possible.  Context is needed before everyone can move forward.  I would think that Objectivists would be happier about Trump than they are.  I would also think that Tea Party types would as well.  Apparently they have in their mind something else that a POTUS is supposed to be which is really too much to ask.  Trump essentially to me is the first Objectivist oriented candidate to ever truly make it to such a high position, and I think the benefits philosophically to our society will be immeasurable.  It really comes down to the public versus private sector ability.  Public sector approaches are too costly and grossly ineffective where private is much more driven by individual performance and that is the world that Donald Trump comes out of—and it will be exciting to watch.

I’m certainly not an Objectivist from Ayn Rand’s camp.  While I admire the work and think it is the best thing the human race has come up with to date regarding management of government resources, it doesn’t go far enough for me.  I make it no secret that one of my favorite books is Thus Spoke Zarathustra yet I would say that my thinking about things is naturally evolved further along than Nietzsche—which is understandable.  That was over 100 years ago, and we’ve learned a lot since then.  Ayn Rand’s work was 50 years ago, so it’s not exactly current.  I have decided that I need to take those types of ideas to the next level before I can have meaning in them which is what I’m doing in the Curse of Fort Seven Mile series.  I can’t just write stories for commercial endeavor.  Even though I enjoy it, there has to be some earth-shaking sense in the work that steers the mind toward the answers for living.  While Ayn Rand denied it, I see clearly that her novels were certainly extensions to Thus Spoke Zarathustra—which was to say, a graduation of mankind from a kind of dependent sacrificial being, into a self-aware, self-sustaining creature capable of immeasurable creation through sheer imagination.

Glenn Beck lost me back when he was on Fox News when he’d speak with ill will toward Nietzsche because Beck needed a “God” figure in his life.  He and a lot of people like him apparently needed to feel that a “god” was guiding them through some divine providence toward some heavenly revelation—as if the plans for America were tied to the plans extracted from Heaven.  To me, that’s lazy thinking—and I deep dive the reasons in my Curse of Fort Seven Mile series.  You can’t just trust something that may not be even concerned with our dimensional reality.  What might call itself a “god” to us may in fact be a disgraceful devil of some kind and we need our intellects to guide us through those decision gates.  Ultimately however, the problem that these types of conservatives have with Donald Trump is that he has certainly graduated in his life away from the need to feel guilt about anything and is living as a self-professed intelligence.  Trump to me is very much the character from Thus Spoke Zarathustra who lived in the mountain cave and came down to the village below to teach the world about the Overman.  Biblically, Donald Trump is not an icon of virtual, but as a graduate from the necessity to sacrifice one’s essence for the benefit of the collective whole—Donald Trump is the first of his kind to emerge into public office.  I say that now because the Hillary Clinton antics with Elizabeth Warren just aren’t going to be able to stop him in a general election.  Yet Glenn Beck in his early days and even as recently as the latest Atlas Shrugged movies was very supportive of Ayn Rand, as was Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan, and Rand Paul.  They apparently don’t understand what makes the characters great in Rand’s books.  It certainly wasn’t a propensity to sacrifice themselves to some “divine providence.”  Glenn Beck actually called on people to “fast” to beg God to keep Donald Trump from winning the presidential nomination.  That is just ridiculous.  Talk about sacrifice—Beck doesn’t understand—he has clearly lost his mind.

I understand that some people need a “god” to hold their life together. You can’t just live a life leaning toward meek sacrifice for 70 years of a life then stop on a dime and say that man has within its mind the power of the universe and that “god is dead,” as Nietzsche did in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  However, the need for a “god” is in mankind’s intellect, and the need to hold on to that crutch has kept our society in this ridiculously infantile state for far too long.  You will never get to John Galt’s engine of the world by sacrificing bits of yourselves to a being beyond time and space.  Whatever is out there in those folds of time needs to be properly vetted before trust can properly be established—you certainly can’t trust some Roman interpretation of a Christ metaphor passed down to us from the ages of Zoroastrianism.  That’s just stupid.  While I don’t fault people for their needs intellectually, I do when it comes to crossing the streams of proper government.  Thinking is the key to human endeavor, not hoping that a “god” will show mercy and guide us to some Promise Land.  We have to make that Promised Land though our intellectual gifts provided by “god,” but we can’t be passive recipients in our approach.

Donald Trump’s harshest critics are those who find it appalling that he is completely a man of his own making, that he seeks only his counsel when making a decision, that he loves himself and isn’t meek, and that he shows an indication toward the complete domination of his enemies.  They can’t understand such a person because Trump is free from the need to sacrifice anything to make something—so they can’t understand how it will be possible as president.  But praying for a god to save a nation is just as stupid as the athlete who scores a touchdown and points toward heaven as though “god” made such a thing possible.  To say that America is great because God is behind it is just as stupid as the Muslims believing that Allah wants them to kill infidels.  America is great because the thoughts of mankind have been free to unleash the gifts of imagination manifested into invention and that is something new.  Donald Trump is a product of the American system.  He is a graduate of individualism and that is what will make him a great president.  I know I can trust Donald Trump because he works by the rules of individual integrity—he doesn’t need the judgment of God to keep him from smoking cigarettes or doing drugs—the way Glenn Beck uses God to keep back the demons from his past.  Trump cares about himself and his family and he doesn’t want to be viewed by history as being bad, tyrannical, or a loser in any way.  He wants to be loved as he loves himself and he wants to give people that feeling that he has when he gets up each morning—it’s the one thing that billions of dollars in the bank can’t buy, and it’s the one thing he wants more than anything in life.  He wants the respect of those around him and the way he intends to get it is by the means of the individualists who have written in literature the foundations of our present circumstances—philosophers like Nietzsche and Ayn Rand.

Trump will unlock through his mouth the potential of America and that is the force behind the movement that is now afoot.  That movement is what these #NeverTrump people are scared of.  They fear that America will head toward Sodom and Gomorra with the inauguration of Donald Trump because they essentially don’t understand the power that drives people on the individual level.  For instance, I was at a baseball game at the Cincinnati Reds home park and my wife and I were having diner in the Diamond Club.  It was all very nice, the food was on the upside and the drinks were flowing all around us.  People were happy, festive and we were all living a life of extreme opulence.  The food was too good and many of us were still enjoying it when the game started.  When the National Anthem came on everyone stopped and stared at the televisions to watch what was happening out on the field. That entire place went dead silent and everyone was enrapt with reverence toward the greatness of our country.  Nobody told anyone to behave that way; it came out of the individual inclination of the collected masses.  That is in essence the Donald Trump life.  Work hard, have plenty so that there is an excess, and be gracious with that excess.  But don’t be a loser, because if you are, you deserve to be bitch slapped into oblivion.  Nobody likes a loser and America isn’t a nation of such people.  It has been made to feel that way, but it’s time to stop feeling that way.  And only Donald Trump can invoke that character once again by returning our nation toward an ideology centered on individual achievement instead of collective salvation.  That is where the psychosis of the #NEVERTRUMPs crosses the line because their judgment of good and evil is in violation of the principles of actual success.  America can’t afford their immature interpretation any longer.  People don’t need to be told to be silent when the National Anthem is playing, and they don’t need to be told to be kind to their neighbor by someone like Glenn Beck.  We certainly don’t need any more preachers.  We need action by individuals to make our county great again—and we need a salesman to resurrect it within our culture.  That is why Donald Trump will be such a great president.  He offers a continuation of the philosophies which have evolved over the years toward individualism and now society can see a fine example from the White House which perhaps will save our nation by unlocking that potential in others.  That is why the Trump nomination is such a big deal, and why so many people are having a difficult time with it.  They don’t have the proper philosophy in their own life to understand–and that isn’t our fault.  It’s their problem.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Donald Trump is ‘The Fountainhead’: Individualism is a higher concept over collectivism

 

I thought it was the biggest story of the week, and I wouldn’t be completely forthcoming if I didn’t know why he said what he did—specifically.  (CLICK HERE TO SEE WHY) But what a bold proclamation it was for Donald Trump to be interviewed by the very liberal Kristen Powers of USA Today and for him to mention that he liked Ayn Rand and specifically, The Fountainhead and the hero of the story Howard Roark.  We know that Paul Ryan likes Atlas Shrugged, and that Ted Cruz is a fan of Rand’s work—not just that he likes it, but that he is inspired by it.  Yet only Donald Trump could say the things he did about Ayn Rand and have it not be the story of the week by the political left.  Here are just a few of the articles talking about Trump’s Rand comments.  It might be remembered that I’ve been on the radio with the guy who wrote The Federalist article and it was rather hilarious to see how bent out of shape he was over the Powers story.

http://thefederalist.com/2016/04/12/donald-trump-is-an-ayn-rand-villain/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/04/11/donald-trump-interview-elections-2016-ayn-rand-vp-pick-politics-column/82899566/

When I wrote my article about Donald Trump being quite a lot like the famous Ayn Rand hero of The Fountainhead way back in August there was a considerable amount of scorn about it from friends I have in the “Objectivist” community.  They couldn’t believe I said such a thing—because to them, Trump was a progressive—a statist—a tyrant in the making.  They couldn’t think of him as a Howard Roark or even attribute to him the kind of intelligence that would be most at home with Ayn Rand’s heroes.  But with Trump, that was all I could see and that he was the best opportunity to take the United States to a level of philosophic understanding that could only so far be found in an Ayn Rand novel.

Everybody thinks they are an expert—yet they get caught all too often in the superficial elements of Donald Trump’s personality.  I see in Trump a man who has paintings on his Trump Tower ceiling and has an apartment, and private airplane covered in real gold.  I see a guy who has a stunningly beautiful wife and a wonderful family and can notice a fingerprint on something he cares about from twenty feet away and it drives him crazy.  I hear in him a guy that says he is his only foreign policy advisor, and that he consults……himself—and I see a guy so much like Howard Roark that no other character in all of literary history comes close to describing the real Donald Trump—the guy who sleeps in Trump Tower and likes to put pictures of himself on the wall of his office.  Trump loves himself and is all about the “Pronoun I,” and to me that is extremely appealing.  CLICK HERE TO REFER TO A PAST ARTICLE ABOUT THIS VERY SITUATION AND THE NEED FOR IT IN POLITICS. 

I have spent millions and millions of words on these pages talking about how stupid collective assimilation is in anything—that the biggest mystery and key to success in most things is individually led leadership.  My favorite part of the novel, The Fountainhead was when Howard Roark declined to be on the architectural board for the World’s Fair.  He insisted that he contribute his designs as a solitary figure, not as a part of a collective board.  Ayn Rand was onto something very important there pertinent to the American economy and it was unique to her.  Liberals and the public in general think wrong on this matter—and it starts in public school and our churches.  The assumption is that two heads are better than one, and that fifty heads are even better yet is one of the biggest mistakes the human race has made so far in our written history.  I have yet to see a company that functions well under this philosophy.  Many movie production companies and many Silicone Valley operations believe in collective enterprise—but what they are presenting is an illusion—because most of their successful projects are still led by very strong individuals who are clever about the way they extract the individual effort out of their teams.  But it isn’t the collective mass of a board of directors or the worker bees of a project that lead to its success—like the striking fools at Verizon believe in their union behavior—it’s the solitary efforts of individuals.

I know exactly what Trump is doing with other people because I by default utilize many of his same strategies—so it’s easy for me to see the man behind the façade.  I do see in Trump a man who loves art, who enjoys the fine things in life as an individual and certainly marches to the beat of his own drum—but he has learned to pull other people into his vision with the opportunity to share with him greatness.  Most of what he does is utilize raw leadership tactics—which is why he’s popular to begin with and has a level of celebrity that is bullet proof—because his skills are so highly specialized and beyond the mechanisms our society has established to suppress challenges to its static system.

The world is burning with socialism—once you leave the shores of the United States, socialism is literally everywhere.  Collectivism is the mode of conduct that the world uses to establish its morality—and it’s wrong.  Nobody is more important than you dear reader.  However, you best serve others by serving yourself—and if you truly love others you seek to preserve them because it would hurt you to see them in demise.  I read just last night a comment about Republicans and Democrats that went something like this—“if the elephant and the donkey have let you down, turn to the lamb.”  It was a religious argument about politics essentially saying that Republicans and Democrats are one in the same, and that a person should turn toward the church—the sacrificial lamb.  Well, that is the dumbest thing I’ve heard in a long time—nobody should surrender their life to the whims of the galaxy or even the universe.  Jobs are made by individuals for other individuals to build their lives around, decisions are made by individuals for the impact that they might have on the world around them—humans are thinking creatures who make magnificent structures by thought alone and Donald Trump is one of the least apologetic yet most successful among us to utilize this essential function.  We have to stop this whole sacrificial notion—its barbaric.

When I hear Trump say that he’d like to marry his daughter and see that he uses the beauty of his wife Melania to club rivals over the head, I don’t see or hear a self-centered maniac who is selfishly dangerous in his sexual promiscuity—I see a guy who as an individual appreciates the beauty of a fine women as a work of art and loves how it inspires the individual in him to do better and work harder each day so that he can be near them—and I don’t think it’s a sexual thing.  When I hear him say that as a 70 year old man that he will be the healthiest specimen to ever hold the White House and that his big hands are evidence of a large penis that can bag and tag fine women and leave them happy about it—and that those same hands can drive a golf ball over 300 yards—I hear a man who won’t back down from any world leader for the sake of collective assimilation.   I hear a guy who will walk into the United Nations and say as Howard Roark did in The Fountainhead—you either do it my way, or I’m out.  To the consensus builders who think this approach is appalling, they’d be right from their point of view.  But their way has cost the United States everything and everyone else in the world very little—because they brought nothing to the table to begin with.  The battle of our day is literally over the benefits of collectivism and Individualism—and how the two are not compatible.  Trump stands by individualism vehemently and that is something that we’ve never seen attempt to enter the White House and I think we either find those traits in ourselves once again—if not for the very first time—or we perish into oblivion.  There is no middle ground and this philosophic argument is all about absolutes.

While progressives contemplate a world managed by a few elite academics who distribute fairness across civilization like butter on a piece of bread—Trump is nothing like any of them.  Yet he can sit down with the very liberal Kristen Powers and give USA Today an interview on Ayn Rand and the world didn’t melt into a whirlwind because honestly they haven’t caught up to the events of his previous day—or the things he does and says tomorrow.  Yet there it is, and I’m proud of him for saying it.  And it is my sincere dream that Donald Trump could step into the White House and treat it like Howard Roark—bringing to not only America, but the world, the values of The Fountainhead.  If there was ever a time for it—it is now.  If not now, then perhaps never again.  I don’t think we’ll get another shot before socialism destroys our civilization—globally.  As a I watch modern artists like James Cameron talk about his new hippie driven movies like Avatar and Disney make Star Wars into a much more progressive mythology—it is obvious that they are missing the secret ingredient that Ayn Rand so eloquently brought to life in her American novels—individuals trump collectivism.  The first Star Wars films were about this idea and even Cameron’s Titanic was about this issue—and ultimately the love between Jack and Rose was very Randian. 

Why did Jack let Rose lay on the door at the end of the movie essentially sacrificing himself—he did it because he loved her and to preserve that love he had to save her.  He didn’t do it to benefit society—he did it to save his love for her.  Ayn Rand called this the Virtue of Selfishness—which many people misinterpret—but it is the ultimate driver for how we work as a human species.  And nobody running for office understands that love better than Donald Trump.  Most modern artists get this delicate interpretation wrong—because they value the sacrificial lamb concept established by religions to falsely place value in the collective whole of society. But they miss the point of living entirely.  For there is only one reason that childbirth is such a traumatic experience, and an epic journey that launches us into existence—it’s because our individual lives mean something and we each can contribute something to the work of art that is “life.”  There are very few people who really understand such a delicate balance—and clearly Donald Trump is one of them.  We are in new territory philosophically with this election—and hopefully it’s not too late.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Why I’d Give Billions of Dollars to Archaeologists: The undocumented ancient civilizations under San Francisco and the Cloud People

One of the reasons I feel the way I do about civilizations and the politics of them is that I have a long time interest in history.  When I was in the 7th grade and had to take an aptitude test designed to point students in a career direction, my three results were archaeologist, test pilot, and stunt man.  It was an unusual result and my teacher back then was quite animated about the findings—after all this was a year before there was ever an Indiana Jones movie and nobody in their right mind would want to be an archaeologist.  My teacher thought I should have more sustainable career options and that my interests were………not aligned to reality.  For one, there wasn’t much money in the archaeology occupation, and it’s not very good for families.  It requires one to travel all over the world often in hostile territories rife with political limitations.  Even when you do get a dig permit the limits on them don’t allow you to find much beyond a few pots and pans leaving speculation into the greater civilization behind the artifacts to be highly speculative.   From the time I could first read my mother bought me great books about the world’s great mysteries—likely the same ones that inspired George Lucas to make the Indiana Jones films, and that is how I learned to read.  I fell in love with history early and it was always something that I found as my foundation passion.  If I had it my way, we would spend billions of dollars per year in America learning about our past so that we could prevent the same mistakes in the future.  We know next to nothing about where we came from and what the people were like who founded our lineage.  My study of the ancient cultures we know about has shaped much of my view about politics and philosophy—and it is my belief that the primary reason that more isn’t studied, is because that knowledge is intended to remain suppressed—for the preservation of the static society we have inherited.  Knowledge otherwise might provoke too radical of a change and many just aren’t prepared for those changes—yet.

With all that said, I don’t think we are even close to understanding our “native” past in North America—or even South America.  There were apparently very complex societies in the high Andes region before there was ever an Incan Empire, and the Bay Area of San Francisco has ancient walled boundary lines which predate any known society and is a lot more sophisticated than the nomad Indian tribes that were found there during westward expansion.  In fact, it looks like most of Northern California was host to this ancient civilization for which we know nothing about.  The relics of their vast enterprise are covered by modern development—which is usually the case—those are the two enemies of archaeological understanding—war and development.  Whether it is the covered up ruins around San Francisco featured below or the “Cloud People” of Northern Peru—there is a lot we need to learn.  The history books have not been closed on our ancient past—rather, we haven’t even made it through chapter one yet—much to the dismay of the many museums depending on federal grants to stay open and who want to end the story now to preserve the integrity of their exhibits.  There are two reports that I found uniquely connected even though they are very far apart geographically presented as follows:

All over northern California specifically in the region of San Francisco are mysterious 6’ walls.  The walls of the East Bay traverse some 50 miles in a straight line from the Carquinez Strait to San Jose, and in some places another 20 miles inland to Mt. Diablo.  They are generally six feet high and so far have defied explanation, hence the title “mysterious.”  For nigh on 100 years they have been explored, thought about but today have been largely abandoned.  Theories on their origins range from Zheng Hue’s exploration fleet, giants, Native Americans, even farmers but so far little or no archaeological research has been done on them outside of the trying to document their history which apparently pre-dates western/Spanish activity in the area.

Rough estimates by a geologist put their age older than 400 years or circa late 1500’s which puts this anomaly in new territory and forces the dismissal of many common theories about European / Spanish farms.  Especially since in greater San Francisco region the Spaniards did not settle  until 1769 when an expedition lead by Don Gaspar de Portola and Fr. Juan Crespi began to settle what is now San Francisco.  There was the odd seafarer such as Sir Francis Drake, who was believed to have sailed through the area in 1579, but seeing as he was a privateer the notion that he and his men attempted to settle the region is highly suspect.

http://www.anomalies.net/east-bay-walls-enigmatic-feature-or-part-of-the-remnants-of-a-lost-civilization-in-northern-california/

Then many thousands of miles to the south high in the Andes region is a fortress apparently belonging to the “Cloud People” who had predated the Inca civilization and had joined the Spanish in conflict against their South American rivals.  When you hear reports from environmental activists that nothing good comes from deforestation tell them this story.  If not for deforestation, the ruins of these long forgotten “Cloud People” would have never been found. Trees grow back and the species of animals that live in rain forests can migrate and return, but the treasures lost under the overgrowth from past civilizations are lost until they are uncovered and this most recent discovery is evidence that points to the possibility of a lot more.

Remains have been found before but scientists have high hopes of the latest find, made by an expedition to the Jamalca district in Peru’s Utcubamba province, about 500 miles north-east of the capital, Lima.

Until recently, much of what was known about the lost civilization was from Inca legends.

Even the name they called themselves is unknown. The term Chachapoyas, or ‘Cloud People’, was given to them by the Incas.

Their culture is best known for the Kuellap fortress on the top of a mountain in Utcubamba, which can only be compared in scale to the Incas’ Machu Picchu retreat, built hundreds of years later

Radiocarbon dating samples show that construction of the structures started in the 6th century AD and the complex was occupied until the Early Colonial period (1532-1570). Through the pre-Columbian, conquest and colonial periods, there are only four brief written references to Kuelap. It was rediscovered in 1843.

That year Juan Crisóstomo Nieto, a judge in Chachapoyas, made a survey of the area and took note of Kuelap’s great size; he was guided by villagers who had known of the site for generations. Subsequently, Kuelap gained the attention of explorers, historians and archaeologists. Notable observers who helped publicize the site included Frenchman Louis Langlois (who wrote a description of Kuelap in the 1930s), Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier, Ernst Middendorf, Charles Wiener and Antonio Raimondi.

The fortress of Kuelap or Cuélap (Chachapoyas, Amazonas, Perú), associated with the Chachapoyas culture, consists of a walled city, with massive exterior stone walls surrounding more than four hundred buildings. The complex, situated on a ridge overlooking the Utcubamba Valley in northern Peru, is roughly 600 meters in length and 110 meters in width. It could have been built to defend against the Huari or other hostile peoples. However, evidence of these hostile groups at the site is minimal.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1091550/Ancient-city-discovered-deep-Amazonian-rainforest-linked-legendary-white-skinned-Cloud-People-Peru.html

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

I would propose that these two stories of recent discoveries and contemplations of an ancient past are only the tip of the iceberg.  As I said, if it were up to me, archaeologists would be well-funded in America—by private donations of course–to expose this lost past so we could better understand the circumstances of our present.  If I had the extra money of several billion dollars—I’d give them a check today.  I am inclined to think that these two aforementioned cultures, whoever they are, were not the first of their kind—that before them was likely another lost race of people.  Related to the Cloud People of South America it should be of great concern that they were known to be as “white” and fair-haired as typical Scandinavians or even Germans.  How did they get there so long ago?  That is a question that demands an answer.  But before we can have that answer we have to see the value in seeking it.  We have a long way to go before understanding our own history—and it should be a much greater priority.  Because within that answer is the key to understanding much of our modern world and the psychosis which seems attached to it. Before you can fix the future you have to understand the past and we are a long way from that.  Obviously we need to strive to do better.  The evidence is all around us.  All we need to do is be willing to look at it.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Thank You Merle Haggard: Saving lives with the wisdom of lyrics learned from hard living

I have a lot to thank Merle Haggard for and I’ve been thinking about them all since his death on April 6th 2016.  He had a lot of great songs, but for me the most important and my personal favorite was ‘Misery and Gin.’  I was 12 years old when I saw the movie Bronco Billy by Clint Eastwood for the first time.  It was and still is one of my favorite movies.  It hit me at just the right time in my life.  Like the Clint Eastwood character in that movie, I was socially awkward up to that point, so I could easily relate to his quirkiness.  But the tenacity for which the Bronco Billy’s character stuck to his beliefs even in spite of a changing world held a lot of appeal to me—so I watched it often.  One particular time was as a late teenager, I had just been in a serious car accident running around with friends.  The driver crashed in a manner that should have killed everyone.  I had blood running down every part of my body, and every bone hurt.  It was probably the most fun I had ever had watching a movie was that particular time.  I had taped Bronco Billy on a new VHS tape off television and enjoyed watching it when I needed a lift—and as I  breathed a sigh of relief at still being alive, the Bronco Billy message resonated intensely with me at that particular time.  And of all the good songs in that movie it was ‘Misery and Gin’ which had taught me the most about life.  Clint Eastwood wisely allowed Merle Haggard to have an extended section of the movie to sing his new song and rolled it nicely into the events of the movie—and I never forgot it.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-merle-haggard-appreciation-20160407-story.html

‘Misery and Gin’ was everything that I didn’t want to be in life. It was a parody of itself, a country song that espoused all the misery that drinking, picking up loose women, and bars filled with cigarette smoke entailed.   It was an extremely honest song and was one that I decided very early on that I wanted nothing to do with relating to lifestyle choices.  It reminded me of several uncles I had who lived that life, and I thought they were losers.  It gave me more conviction to turn away from that kind of life well before I was deep into puberty—and I am thankful for it.  Regarding the night of the car accident, I was with a friend in a hot rod car after a Christmas party for the place we worked.  That friend and I had a rival relationship; we would continually outdo each other on daring deeds.  We took outlandish risks to satisfy the inner daredevil in us—such as playing high-speed chicken with cop cars, fighting the biggest bullies in whatever number they presented themselves and performing any risk of physical manner that opportunity allowed like jumping across high-rise roof tops.  We did some really crazy things that should have killed us several hundred times over—and neither of us ever backed down from anything.  But you can only push things so far.  We both had a knack for coming out on top no matter how deep in trouble we got ourselves.  I think I was around 17 at the time.

One thing I had on this friend is that he had difficulty with talking to girls and women.  I was never afraid to talk to any girl anywhere about anything.  It was very easy for me, but for him it was extremely difficult.  He could never find the right words for the right girl.  So I’d hang that over his head whenever I could.  He’d respond by showing off more to compensate for his inequity.  I had arranged for three very attractive girls to race us back to his house after this Christmas party so he was showing off in his hot rod car to do his part in impressing them.  He let them get on the highway in front of us by nearly a mile and his plan was to blow by them at over 150 MPH—to show them how fearless and how powerful his car was—because we all know that girls like that kind of thing—the naughty side of them anyway.  That’s when his angle was wrong and there was too much traffic on the road and his Chevy, Nova had too short of a wheel base to maneuver quickly in any kind of evasive action so he fishtailed wildly into a retaining wall after blowing by the girls and the car spun endlessly through the heavy traffic before going airborne then flipping end over end down the highway.  Of course we didn’t wear seat belts in those days.

Miraculously we landed with the car pinned up against a retaining wall, nose down and pieces of the car strewn all over the highway.  We were both alive and hadn’t hit any other cars somehow.  But we were all sliced up from broken glass and the violence of the impacts.  The police came and arrested my friend for reckless operation, endangerment and a whole host of other violations.  I was free to go to the hospital.  Instead, the three girls took me home and helped me get all patched up.  I put duck tape on the deep cuts to hold the skin together and applied maple syrup to clot up the blood that was still dripping everywhere.  After all that was over, I watched Bronco Billy after popping some popcorn and having a nice cold Coke.  That is when I realized that life didn’t get any better than that.  A good movie, a nice drink, and the thrill of being alive—all I needed was a nice woman to share that kind of thing with. I met my wife about 9 months later—and obviously now I live a lot like Bronco Billy did in that movie—by choice largely because I decided to after that night.  It was a little more complicated than that, but looking back, it’s pretty easy to see.

Of that movie it was actually Merle Haggard’s song ‘Misery and Gin’ which communicated strongest to me.  I decided I wanted no part of living anything like that life.  While most everyone I have known before and since find appeal to that lifestyle—it doesn’t have to be a country honky-tonk, it could be a BW3s or a nightclub—drinking and hanging out with women who have made bad decisions in their lives and living a life of perpetual misery just wasn’t something I was going to do—and I never have.  Even that night in the car, it was my love of life which was the secret ingredient that the girls liked so much and why it was so easy to get them to come along and do whatever I wanted—including patching me up.  Of course nobody understood that—but I knew it was the promise of getting away from the misery and gin lifestyle that the girls had been trained which was their ultimate fate by a society stuck to that fate by their own bad decisions.  I offered a release from that, something of a lottery ticket.  It was very appealing to both the opposite sex, and the guy friends I had who clearly wanted to be a part of it whenever possible.

I used Bronco Billy to bond with my wife.  We watched it several times a month during our early marriage and she came to understand the words of Merle Haggard very well.  Without Bronco Billy, it might have been too difficult to convey to her what kind of life I intended to live.  She wouldn’t have understood.   But the mood of the entire movie was captured so nicely in that old Merle Haggard song and I have to thank him for it.  It put my life in a positive direction very early.  Without it, I probably would have still found a way, but it might have taken me a decade or two more to figure it all out.  Because of his song, I was able to accelerate the process and apply it much more quickly than if it hadn’t of ever been made.  So I’ll miss Merle Haggard. He made my life better in a lot of ways. He was certainly one of the greats and I’ll always be thankful.  Listen to the words and maybe it will help you too.IMG_0193

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Ending the Republican Party: The “stuffed” elephant in the room

The answer to the elephant in the room is that it is dead—and has been so for some time.  It is time to acknowledge it and move on to something else.  The Republican Party, which was created to end slavery, for which Abraham Lincoln was its best spokesman—died a long time ago—and is no longer effective.  If you put Karl Rove, John Kasich, Mitt Romney and me in a room together all three of them added up would not even come close to me as far as conservatism—so they do not represent me as a political party.  They have lost their war with the left and become too much like the enemy—the political left in America.  They are useless to me in a representative republic.  I have voted for them over and over again for several decades, but they have always been ineffective and the reason was that we were voting for a taxidermy version of an elephant, instead of a real creature full of vigor.

That nagging prospect has been on my mind for quite a long time, but it was never clearer than on the night Ted Cruz won the Wisconsin primary.  Cruz has no shot of winning the nomination, yet the party, the media, and all the #NEVERTRUMP fans worshiping the dead and deceased Republican Party behaved as though a New Year had dawned on them and life had been returned to their caricature.  Only Donald Trump has a mathematical path of achieving the Republican nomination at the Convention in July.  Nobody else does—yet the party is willing to use anybody and anything to delay Trump so that they could hold onto their grip of party control and what they believe are conservative values. Yet studying the voting patterns of Wisconsin, it was only in the heavily populated areas—particularly those most affected by the major talk radio stations which espoused the #NEVERTRUMP mantra loudest that Cruz won.  All of the surrounding, rural counties went for Trump.  It was almost a carbon copy of the type of voting pattern seen when Democrats compete against Republicans.  Country people were having their voices drowned out by the more heavily populated urban areas—and they were not happy about it.  The Republican Party wanting any good news that it could get was willing to accept any information that stopped Trump from becoming head of the party—even to the point of self-destruction.  The short-sightedness was grossly obvious.

But the glee that emerged from their mouths was rather pathetic.  It signified a political party at the Alamo not acting heroically in one last stand, but of a bunch of soldiers out of bullets knowing that the end was coming then seeing that the encroaching army was short on ammunition themselves and was awaiting supplies—they were able to live for five more minutes and were happy about it—even boastful.  They were so happy that they denied Trump of roughly 40 little delegates that they missed the point of what the supporters of the GOP frontrunner were espousing.  They were just happy that they had a better chance of getting the nomination process to a convention so that they could insert somebody they were more comfortable with—as if the public would put up with it.  It was a pretty disgusting display.

My first thoughts and those which stayed with me after considerable contemplation were that the Republican Party just needed to be put to rest.  A new party needed to be created, one that better represented conservatives and rural voters much more accurately.  I think Trump should make a point and win his remaining primary victories, but that he should then just start his own party—likely a continuation of the Reform Party for which he, Pat Buchannan and Ross Perot were a part of in the past.  Even Rob Portman was a part of the Reform Party when he ran for the congressional seat he took over in 1993—I know that because he was going to the same meetings I was—I knew him back then.  It’s time for a fresh start and a completely new political philosophy not rooted in the failures of the past.  A return to the Party of Reagan is not enough for me. I want something better than what Abraham Lincoln was the head of.

Regardless of how many delegates Trump has, the #NEVERTRUMP people have shown that they will not behave themselves and unite behind him—which they should do.  So they need to be destroyed as a movement.  We need to have a head to head election with Hillary, Paul Ryan, and Donald Trump.  Trump as everyone knows by now has a solid 30% support base no matter what.  In a three-way race, that almost gets him an assured victory.  I don’t believe Hillary will be able to get 50% of a vote in any election—especially with the troubles she has, and there is no way Ryan beats Trump.  I think it’s obvious that given a choice in a three-way race it’s not Republicans that will be split.  Kasich as it stands now is similar to Hillary in politics, Cruz with Ryan, and then there is Trump who is about 7 to 8% ahead of everyone else routinely.  That is the number nobody is talking about, and it would give Trump a victory in a three-way race without question.  So why not?  If we don’t have this showdown now—voters will continue to be tricked into voting for the stuffed caricature of an elephant—and that’s just not fair to them.

The only advantage for Trump to win the nomination from the Republican Party is to tap into the funds to run a national campaign.  However, Bernie Sanders has shown what people are willing to do to fund a campaign, and Trump has more access to funds from his fans than any political candidate has in the history of politics.  I wouldn’t fault Trump for taking $10 million dollar donations from his friends—like Carl Icahn and others to win a general election.  I think he has a better chance of winning as a third-party candidate than as head of the Republican Party with all the inner back stabbing that will take place even if he wins the nomination outright.  So he should just leave and let them flail on the vine rudderless.   The Republican Party doesn’t deserve Trump and they certainly don’t deserve me and the many voters who are sick and tired of the establishment passivity toward Democrats.

To all the #NEVERTRUMPS, I don’t want to be in a political party with you people. I want nothing to do with your stupidity.  I’m happy to have it out in a general election in a three-way race and see what happens after the smoke clears.  What has to happen is a major philosophic shift in political philosophy—the standard mode of operation just won’t be acceptable.  I have always supported the Reform Party, I did when Ross Perot ran in 1992 and in 1996, and I supported Trump and Buchannan when they toyed with the idea in 1999.  The reason that the election between Bush and Gore was so close in 2000 was literally that people had to pick between one piece of shit and another.  Which one was better—nobody knew and the country was split right down the middle.  Bush was not a good president, and then the GOP thought to offer us John McCain, and Mitt Romney. 

They are just stupid—rooting for the GOP is like cheering on the Cincinnati Bengals to win a Super Bowl.  They just don’t have the ability to get to the big game—let alone win.  So let’s just drop them once and for all.  Even if Trump secures the nomination with a win in California—he should still go third-party so that the Republicans can be put in a museum with all the other stuffed animals.  They are guaranteed losers who will continue down that path until they are taken out of the game.  And the time to do that is now-before they do any more damage.  Basically, either the GOP brings in fresh blood, or we dump the party, change the name, and have something else to represent conservative values.  Not “progressive” conservative values like many of these #NEVERTRUMPs believe (Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, John McCain, ETC.)  But something all together different and more representative of the rural inhabitants of this country—I’m at the point in 2016 of its either Trump for president or nothing for me.  Hillary is not even a factor.  She can’t even beat an old communist lover.  She is not as formidable as the media wants you to believe.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Why You Should Not Vote For Ted Cruz: “Take over the world, rich, powerful, that sort of stuff” while building a North American “community”

Up until really the National Enquirer article I was not adamant that Ted Cruz should not be the presidential nominee.  But after hearing him get the endorsements of people like Lindsey Graham, Jeb Bush, and after Cruz actually hired a Bush to work in his campaign, then witnessing all the dirty tricks that Ted played before Donald Trump hit back—like the hit piece on Melania—I have decided that under no circumstances am I going to support any sitting politicians for President. If someone holds a political position now or ever—I will not vote for them in the upcoming election.  The political establishment is doing everything it can to protect itself from a rebellion they created because of their mass incompetence and dysfunction—and watching their behavior has made me sick of the process.  I don’t believe any of them.   It is obvious to me, and I’m hardly one who falls for disillusion and fantasy.  Yet I have many friends, several who make livings thinking about this kind of stuff—some who actually work for Glenn Beck—who say they won’t vote for Donald Trump because he’s not a conservative.  Well, I think Trump is a conservative in a very liberal part of the country.  He may not be Montana conservative, but he is certainly bold enough to call himself a Republican in the very blue state of New York.  People can argue and debate all they want, but Trump has a wealth building track record that you can see and touch.  Cruz does not.  Instead you get conspiratorial information about Ted Cruz when you do a little digging—and it’s not good—like the following videos. Watch them all then decide if you really believe that Ted Cruz is what he says he is.

If there was anything I liked about Ted Cruz it was during his filibuster speech in front of the Senate where he mentioned Ayn Rand.  Like Paul Ryan he claims to be a fan—which gave me hope for both of them really.  But then again, so was Glenn Beck—and all those people have missed the point she was trying to make.  Ted Cruz is no closer to living in the world of Galt’s Gulch than Jessie Jackson and now that he is being pressed as one of two front runners—his story is breaking down.  This is why we have a long primary season and why running for president is so difficult.  Everyone has to be vetted and we need to see how these people act when they start sweating.  Cruz has not done well.  Even if he didn’t cheat on his wife with five women—he didn’t do a very good job of stepping out in front of the story.  His body language was obviously implicating him behind the tough talk.  He came across to me like the kid seen in the below video who blamed Donald Trump for putting teeth marks in a chair.  Trump because he is the political outsider—is a convenient punching bag—and Cruz’s team uses dirty tricks too much against him in a passive aggressive manner.  They played dirty with Ben Carson, and several others as well.  Then when they tried to appeal to Mormons in Utah with Holy-roller ads using a naked Melania to smear Trump, it was obvious to me that when pressed as a possible president, Cruz would behave in the same fashion.

Of course Cruz wants to debate Trump one on one—it is his strongest aptitude.  Trump would be crazy to fall for the invite—to give a competitor a chance by playing to his strength.  That is not how you win competitions conservatives—you must exploit the weaknesses of your rival—you don’t prop them up.  Cruz is a great debater on policy and all the things that politicians talk about.  But what has he done in his life that says he could do anything but talk?  We’ve heard the talk before and look where it’s gotten us.  No, we need now a man of action and I don’t think there is a single one in public office these days within the Washington D.C. culture who can do the job of president.  There are a few here and there around the country that gives me hope for the republic, but not enough to matter at the federal level yet.  We are in a gunless rebellion right now.  Instead of casualties and collateral damage we are seeing people lose or gain their careers.  That you could say is a more humane way of dealing with insurgents who have failed at their jobs of running the country—and they neurotically respond as if they’d rather die than just lose a social status.  But this rebellion has to happen.  We either take back our country through an election or we do it with some militia organized force—but things cannot continue as they have.  And what I’ve seen out of Ted Cruz is that he’s part of the system—not fighting against it.  Even if Cruz did love the novel Atlas Shrugged—being married to the spouse that he has now would prevent him from acting philosophically from it—which makes him no more effective in government than one of the Bush presidents or the worthless senators like Graham.

Then there was Cruz’s little speech about strong women as he defended his wife Heidi from the wrath of Donald Trump after Ted threw the first punch.    Not that women have to be barefoot and pregnant, and must spend all their time in the kitchen caring for their families to have value, but Cruz did not sound very conservative to me.  There is this whole metrosexual revolution of men who do cooking for their wives and share in the domestic tasks like doing laundry that are derived from the whole progressive push to make everyone equal, and Cruz like a lot of men are a part of it.  In human society the only real differences between men and women are those regarding the sexual roles—that really is it.  If we all placed our brains on a table and took away all the physicality, only then would we truly be equal.  But with physical bodies, we have roles on earth that point straight into the bedroom.  For instance, most women like to take the submissive role in sex, and therefore, they like to pamper their men with domestic obligations—but only if that man has went out into the world and conquered it in some fashion—with either a big paycheck, or in protecting the family from some disturbance.  Men and women must respect each other, but the roles they play in their family life are like foreplay to what happens in the bedroom.  In the most biologically primal fashion that directly leads to a happy sex life, women like to know that a man is changing the tire on the family car and the man likes to see his woman cooking the dinner he worked so hard to put on the table.  That respect leads to a healthy sex life of mutual fulfillment.  In this modern age of high divorce rates and mousey men who share all the cooking and laundry duties with their wives—they don’t understand why the women in their lives don’t want to plop up on the hood of their car in their garage and have spontaneous sex.  It is because the women don’t respect men who endorse all those beta male attributes.  Of course there are exceptions—and some people make it work through sheer will—but biologically we are all wired the same way through our physical bodies—and so long as we live on earth together—those rules apply to everything we do.  Trump understands those rules—Cruz certainly doesn’t and you can see it on Heidi’s face—she is suffering.  Most women in Heidi’s position use career to substitute the closeness they lack with their husbands.  These days’ women have been taught from little girls that this progressive method is the way they must conduct their lives—so they usually enter marriage confused as to their roles within the family.  But just a note to men in general, if you have to get your wife drunk to want to have sex, you are screwing up your romantic life with her.  Men in that situation need to change things for the benefit of the woman.  Society won’t acknowledge this problem, but it’s quite obvious—and it is destroying an entire generation of relationships.  Ted Cruz came out in his chastisement of Donald Trump sounding like a silly soccer dad justifying his own personal failures—and it was certainly pathetic.  It wasn’t presidential, and it certainly wasn’t “conservative.”

That of course brings us back to Donald Trump and the Cruz supporters who declare that the New York billionaire isn’t a conservative.  Trump is rich and he didn’t get that way giving away money.  He has a happy housewife at home taking care of his family.  Trump is pro gun, pro border security, against Common Core, and favors lowering taxes with an aggressive plan that might actually work.  He is decisive and a natural leader and never backs down from a fight.  What’s not to like?  And he has a track record of accomplishment both good and bad–we can see what we are buying with him.  With Cruz, who says he’s the ultimate conservative—what do we really know?  Because when you peek under the hood there is a lot not to like—he’s underpowered, feminized, and all talk.  The holes in Cruz are showing.  If he’s a true conservative then we are in a lot of trouble.  Because he does a lot of things and holds positions that are quite contrary to true conservatism—and you can see that in his campaign.  And now that too much has been said, there is no going back for me.  If the Republican Party does not embrace Donald Trump I’m done with them.  If there is anybody but a pure independent from the political establishment in the White House—then I’m done with the process and will turn from elections into Sam Adams.  Look people, I’m not a Constitutionalist—I think the Hamilton version of the founding documents was entirely too liberal.  I’m an Anti-Federalist by that old definition and if there is movement in the Constitution—it won’t be more toward a socialist state like Obama presents as an option—it will be further to the right—the way that Thomas Jefferson always intended.  Because only in that manner can we get to what we were supposed to always be in America—and Trump is the means to get there.  Cruz is just more of the same.  We don’t need another scandalous preacher from the White House.  We need someone who knows how to manage others—something no politician has shown me they are able to do—because they just don’t have the skill set to accomplish the task.  Ted Cruz has been nothing but a public servant his whole life.  He’s hardly an outsider.  He’s simply sold himself that way—and I’m not buying—under any condition.  The Glenn Beck types are wrong.  They need to go back and re-read Atlas Shrugged.  Cruz isn’t any of the characters in Atlantis.  He’s at the table with Wesley Mouch.  Actually, Ted’s wife is—while the presidential candidate is doing the dishes.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Proof of a Global Communist Agenda Exposed: Alex Jones and his March 2016 show in full

They are lucky in a lot of ways that in America, we have the 1st Amendment.  Because the outrage is protecting them from those of us who are fully awake.  We are shooting words in an open marketplace instead of bullets.  It is obvious that many on the political left and establishment right don’t like the rebellion that is currently occurring, because not enough people are complying to sustain their formulaic plans.  But, too bad.  I will never submit to their way of thinking.  It’s just not going to happen.  If given opportunities  to compete in the marketplace of ideas, I’m happy to use that method to fight them with debate.  But if that goes away, I’m happy to do it in other ways—and I can assure everyone, that compliance with the current conditions is not an option.  To understand what I’m talking about, do yourself a favor, listen and watch this Alex Jones broadcast from Friday March, 25th.  While you are working in the garage on this nice spring day, or around the house, listen to this very good report—its three hours long.  I don’t agree with all of it, but it is quite good at detailing the fight we are all facing.  Don’t be asleep, it’s time to get up and go to work.  Join me on the battlefield.

And do a friend a favor and send this to them to help them wake up as well.  If you want the evidence of what Jones is saying, I have written millions and millions of words providing the proof.  Just look up any topic in the search bar on the left and you’ll find the evidence to substantiate what you are hearing.  If you doubt any of this remember that last night, the same day as this Alex Jones broadcast, Bernie Sanders–a socialist–filled up a 15,000 seat baseball stadium in Seattle.  The communists are rising, and the only defense there is against them–are us.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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A New Hope in Warren Davidson: Thoughts, stategy, and recollection on retaking Capital Hill

With all the recent excitement there hasn’t been much time to congratulate Warren Davidson for winning the seat John Boehner left behind in Ohio’s 8th District.  Butler County Republicans did not support Davidson, so thankfully the district was big enough to not be swayed by the party bosses as the Troy native picked up enough votes north of Preble County to push him over the top in a race with double-digit challengers. I was a supporter of Davidson and he had the endorsement of Ann Becker of the Cincinnati Tea Party so he was our best hope for a congressional representative who would go to Washington D.C. and represent Tea Party type values, fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government.

I met Warren during the campaign and he was my clear pick over everyone else.  There were other people who were good, and decent, but they were missing that magic ingredient of a total package that Davidson had hovering over him.  It is my best hope that he will be able to retain that sincerity as he mixes into the Washington culture of deals and despots soon.  If it isn’t obvious by now, things are going to change after this 2016 election in every aspect of politics.  The Ted Cruz and Donald Trump supporters are insisting on it.  Establishment politicians are less afraid of Ted Cruz than they obviously are of Trump—but the writing is on the wall for them and hopefully Davidson is coming along as a freshman congressman just at the right time.

Anywhere that Bill Ayers is protesting you want to make sure that you are on the opposite side of him.  Ayers, the terrorist friend of Barack Obama was spotted at the Trump rally in Chicago helping to instigate terror throughout the ranks of middle-America with a show of leftist unity that has been nurtured in our education system against American terrorism.  George Soros has been funneling money to insurgents against Trump for reasons that should be obvious.  Trump represents a complete destruction of the political system that most politicians have grown used to supporting. If Trump can manage to stay afloat, his presence along will dominate Washington politics in ways that I have only dreamed of, and Warren Davidson will have the benefit of being a good person not yet corrupted thriving in the wake of that turmoil.  Now that the reality of a Trump candidacy is setting in, the bandits are clinging to desperation.  Soros also tossed money at John Kasich to keep his campaign alive to soak up delegates in an attempt to block Trump from the nomination.  His reason is obvious to all those who know the Soros history.  As an open border advocate, Trump will put an instant end to that practice and restore national sovereignty, which the Hungarian billionaire has spent the last three decades trying to destroy.  All the villains are out against Trump and all at the same time.  Most people would have long been destroyed—so the fact that Trump is still unfettered by all the attacks from both within and outside the Republican Party is quite something to behold.

John Boehner did put out a nice message to Davidson congratulating him on the victory of being the next to hold the seat of the former Speaker of the House.  Years ago I received an exclusive invite to meet with Boehner at a special event in Butler County—and the people who extended the invitation were to me very powerful people in their own right.  I couldn’t figure out why they treated Boehner as a celebrity the way they did.  My in-laws knew John Boehner when he was a bright-eyed boy about a decade younger than Warren Davidson is now—and they liked him a lot.  John Boehner was a hard-working nice boy who had small town charm and common sense.  We all thought that he was going to be something special when he became Speaker of the House—the third most powerful position in the world regarding government. But obviously all the years on the Hill changed Boehner and he wasn’t able to do as we hoped.  So I skipped the event much to the dismay of the invitees—I really didn’t feel like shaking his hand and breaking bread with him.  Just the other day Boehner proposed that at a brokered convention in Cleveland during the hot months of July that the party nominate Paul Ryan to the presidency ignoring Trump and Cruz after all the work and pledges to the party that had been made.  It was just a little shocking that Boehner tossed his opinion in the ring because it showed his real intentions.  Boehner had retired from Congress to do essentially one thing—and that was to become a lobbyist on K-Street a year after.  Trump and his methods of management threaten to make that world of lobbying a much less stable enterprise and for people like Boehner—who are counting on that revenue stream based on those who have come before him—people like Trent Lott—Trump is terrible news for them—because a lot of money gets wasted on K-Street that nobody knows anything about.  I never considered Boehner a celebrity or even somebody I’d want to breathe the same air near.  To me he was just another failed politician.

I had given Boehner two chances not to be a complete loser and he failed at both.  First was a time when I went to one of his town hall events to express the concerns I had for the 8th district.  This was back in 2010. I had prepared a Power Point exhibiting how K-Street needed to be reformed, our involvement in the United Nations scaled back, and how taxes needed to be lowered.  Boehner wasn’t there of course—he was too big of a celebrity by then to deal with constituents directly—so he sent underlings to handle things on his behalf.  I received a nice form letter from him a few weeks later thanking me for participating in the democratic process.  It looked like it was signed by him, but I wasn’t impressed—so I threw it away with the rest of our garbage that day.  A few years later after Obama had worked appointees during congressional recess acting in an illegal fashion I stopped by Boehner’s office with a very carefully worded letter pressing the Speaker to use his power to stop Obama from pushing around the Republican Party.  REVIEW THAT LETTER HERE.  On that I heard nothing from Boehner’s office and that was it for me.  I was ready to see the guy knocked off his perch and replaced with someone who really wanted to do the job of representing our district.

Area Republicans were much divided about Boehner.  The Tea Party types looked for ways to challenge him in a general election as party bosses schemed to keep Republicans aligned under the Speaker.  As Judy Shelton and many others yelled to those who could hear them—that the Tea Party would be destroyed within a year of 2014 they missed that across the county there were more eager young limited government types emerging in the House and Senate that were beginning to challenge Boehner’s leadership driving him to resign in October of 2015.  Republicans in the House were deeply divided, there were many who were trying to represent the Republic in the proper way while many old timers like Boehner were just trying to bide their time until they could become a lobbyist and make a lot of money moving bills around through Capitol Hill.  Unlike Judy Shelton’s Butler County dreams of holding the party together under the old system challenges continued to dominate the political scene and the Tea Party influence expanded.  The old guard had to yield and it did culminating with the resignation of John Boehner.  He figured that he could get out while the getting was good and he could make some serious money as a lobbyists for a decade or two—before reform really kicked in.  But Trump is threatening that entire system in a much shorter timeframe.  Boehner at this rate may not even get to achieve his dream.  So establishment Republicans are more than a little concerned—their gravy train appears to be leaving the station with each new Trump rally and it sincerely scares them.

Meanwhile Warren Davidson will have Boehner’s seat.  He’s a smart young considerate man and you can tell when you shake his hand that he’s politically pure—meaning his idealism is conducive to a constitutional republic.  He has not yet accepted the vile evil that Bill Ayers is protesting in favor of at Trump rallies or the open border policies of George Soros.  He has not yet taken money the way that Kasich did from the Hungarian financial terrorist so he doesn’t yet know the sting of standing up against those forces.  Everything in the 8th District of Ohio makes pretty much sense until you get into that Washington D.C. culture and they bend back your arms to make you play ball.  Hopefully, Davidson can hold up long enough to get a Tea Party president in the White House which looks to happen one way or another.  Trump is my kind of Tea Party candidate, Cruz is Ann’s—but both are hardly the type of people who will stand for politics as usual.  That’s why they are winning and the establishment guys are losing—badly.  In many ways Warren Davidson’s election was just in a nick of time.  I have high hopes for him.  But he will have to use all that West Point strategy and discipline to hold up over the next few years as the establishment transitions over into the kind of government that a new president will bring—with clear Tea Party values.  The writing is on the wall even if establishment politicians don’t want to see it.  Things are changing rapidly—and when it does—we’ll have a great guy holding a valuable seat in Washington D.C.  Thank goodness!

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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The Blue Collar Billionaire: Why Donald Trump is far better than Ted Cruz in 2016

It is very interesting that one of the biggest faults being leveled at Donald Trump for president is that he is willing to compromise and make deals from the Executive Office and that makes him in the eyes of establishment Republicans–untrustworthy.   Given the nature of our Republic, that is the means of managing our government–negotiations.  Ted Cruz on the other hand represents an uncompromising approach to upholding the Constitution—which sounds great on the surface, but as he says, the Washington “Cartel” has no interest in the Constitution, and will simply outmaneuver him at every juncture would he be in the White House instead of Trump.  That is why I say that Cruz would be perfect for a 2024 run, but Trump is perfect now—because Trump has the skills to come out on top in the current deal making culture that embodies modern Washington.  Cruz needs to have some things fixed before he could be effective.  Essentially, the party rule that is currently in place on both sides needs to end—before someone like Cruz could be effective in the White House.  In its present form, Cruz would be paralyzed by the bureaucracy.

The most epic condition of compromise and coming out on the bad side of a deal was Ohio’s very own Governor Kasich and Speaker of the House John Boehner who went golfing with President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.  The Republican Party was essentially neutered in that exchange leaving neither Boehner nor Kasich able to do anything against Obama after it.  I expect deals to be made in Washington.  Our own Constitution was written by making deals between the Anti-Federalists and the Federalists—with Alexander Hamilton coming out mostly on top giving us the Constitution that Ted Cruz reveres so fervently to this day.  Later the Bill of Rights was added to appease the Jeffersonian Anti-Federalists because the Constitution didn’t go far enough and they screamed and pushed until somebody listened.

I’m a pretty rigid person—I stick to my guns on things.  But I also negotiate a lot.  I work with professionals intensely at times, I negotiate around my community, within our family—dealing with children is a constant negotiation—(you can have this if you do that….etc.)  But I most of the time get exactly what I want out of the situation.  I know where my inner bar is set and what parameters I can live with—which is the benchmark of sales ability.  Ted Cruz apparently is missing that.  Honesty is a wonderful trait so long as the people you are dealing with don’t want to play any games—but the human race is currently addicted to games and that is unlikely to change anytime within the next thousand years—so the skills needed to lead a capitalist country like America swarming with socialist sympathizers, aggressive global banks, and clandestine terrorists are elements that must be well represented in the White House. And Trump is the only guy in centuries able to even come close to performing such a tricky job.  The other one that I can think of was Andrew Jackson, whom even though he was a Democrat, I think a lot of.  He did many things wrong, but he had a swagger that was uniquely American and he paid down the debt.  Trump reminds me of that type of potential president—which after all the cross-fire and debate, helped make America one of the greatest countries on earth.  We wouldn’t have Florida if not for Jackson, and likely would have lost the War of 1812.  American needs charismatic characters in the White House once again to rebuild the Republican brand, because right now, that brand is terrible.  And before everyone says that Jackson was a racist and was vile, understand that Woodrow Wilson, the progressive hero was far worse.  Understand history before placing characters from the past into present context.

I am not disturbed at all by The Washington Times secret tapes.  Trump cannot be literal in anything he does because in his mind he knows where his margins are.  Do the American people deserve to know where those margins are—traditionally yes?  But under the circumstances of our present condition, where you can’t trust politicians or understand what their real motivations are—or trust the media and the hit groups behind them which fund everything—information in this day and age has to be somewhat obscure.  It’s a game that has to be played—and the only people you can trust are people who have actually done things.  With Trump, I can see the things he’s built.  I see his nice family, and that is résumé enough for me.  I have a pretty good idea where his margins are based on what he produces.  As it stands for instance our immigration policy is an open sore that is guided by George Soros policies.  That effort has to be undermined by a really good negotiator who can convince a majority of congress, the senate, and the media of its relevance.  A good salesman knows that there is no chance of that happening unless the other party thinks it can get something out of it.  Trump knows that the best way to negotiate is to start off with a strong position that scares that crap out of everyone, then working back from that position to make the other side think it got something out of the deal.  In reality, Trump gets what he wants, which is an enforceable immigration policy and people will eventually be happy with it—as opposed to the Ted Cruz method which is to draw a line in the sand and force a floor battle over budgets and policy that just angers everyone—and gets nothing done at all.   Good management often requires this constant back and force in negotiations, and a good manager knows where to set their high points and how to achieve at their margin without breaking the other side.  Optimally, the other side will feel like they got something out of the deal and everyone walks away happy.

I know this game—but I am surprised that more people in politics don’t understand it.  It could be said that they don’t know it out of convenience.  But after watching the barrage of establishment Republicans berate Donald Trump over the last couple weeks—after the Super Tuesday wins made it very evident that he was really in a position to win the nomination—I was convinced that they really are just stupid.  For that reason, they shouldn’t even be in public office.  Ted Cruz is a legal mind, and we certainly don’t need people like that negotiating anything.  They’ve been doing it for years and they lack the imagination to set a bar at a high mark that they can work to a margin to show compromise.  It sounds good on a campaign trail to tell people you won’t compromise, but the Cruz rigidity has given him no ground as a senator to work from.  He has no allies, and as a President members of his own party will defy him just to spite him.  I think Cruz would have the best of intentions but we all know the path to hell is always paved with good intentions.  Personally, I don’t want any more paths to hell.  I want a president who knows how to win negotiations domestically, and internationally.

What I want out of a president is a guy who can golf with a couple of politicians and win for a change at the real game being played—the negotiations on position.  I was so embarrassed by Kasich and Boehner because they were out-witted by a guy so inept, and has no background in achievement, that they came out looking like fools.  Kasich and Boehner came away from that famous golf game licking the feet of Barack Obama.  I want a guy on the Republican side who can turn those tables for a change, and leave Democrats thanking Trump for all his hospitality afterwards—for expanding the economy, enforcing immigration, opening up the Second Amendment, getting rid of Common Core, and many other things—then stripping down naked to sell their cloths to a charity that Melania Trump is hosting—then thanking the couple and asking for another chance to give their very shirts off their backs again.  That is how Trump will win where Cruz will just create more government gridlock.

You know the situation is dire when the Republican Establishment is dying for Ted Cruz over Donald Trump—even after Cruz had called them essentially an organized crime syndicate.  They figure that they can at least stand up to Cruz and make him appear ineffective—and punish voters for going in his direction.  But with Trump—they can’t deal with a private sector guy in the White House.  Trump would change their culture and that is something that terrifies them.  And what we’d end up getting as a result would be so much more than we have right now paving the way for a true Constitutional Republic in the aftermath.

When playing this kind of chess, you sometimes have to think not just four or five moves ahead, but four of five games ahead.  That is what is needed to beat these establishment types.  This election with Trump is only game one—and we need a lot more victories than one.  We need to start winning for the next 100 years.  People need to start thinking bigger and working toward those goals with an understanding of how the game is played.  This isn’t checkers.  It’s certainly chess.  Ted Cruz and the rest of the GOP are playing checkers.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Defending Donald Trump’s Labor Practices: Politicians don’t understand what makes a good worker

Even as a Trump supporter I was willing to give Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz a look if they were to become the GOP nominee eventually, but not after the debate on Thursday February 25th, 2016 on CNN.  Cruz and Rubio showed a vast amount of ignorance when they tried to pin down Trump on hiring illegal aliens to build Trump Tower back in the 70s.  Cruz and Rubio both of Cuban decent supposedly representing Tea Party type values tried to attribute Trump to committing to hiring only “American” workers on his many projects.  Specifically they brought up Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach where he tends to hire foreign workers there for the seasonal social events that take place about four months out of a year.  Reports are that over 300 people have applied, but they weren’t qualified because as Trump says, most American help doesn’t want the part-time work—and those that do—(and I’ll add this for him so he doesn’t have to say it) don’t bring the kind of energy for the job that such a resort requires.  So he fills the vacancies with foreign workers with the right attitude who will do the seasonal work of one of the most exclusive resorts in the world.  I understand completely and I am one of the most patriotic people on earth.  But apparently, Rubio, Cruz and the entire media doesn’t understand the problem.  So let me illustrate it for everyone on behalf of people like Trump who find themselves unfairly ridiculed for elements beyond their control. 

http://mashable.com/2016/02/25/donald-trump-polish-workers/#A.uIWytlwkqr

http://www.wptv.com/news/political/new-york-times-donald-trump-hires-majority-foreign-workers-at-mar-a-lago-in-palm-beach

Of course such a controversial piece requires context, so let me provide it from my perspective.  If anybody does currently or ever has worked harder than I do, I’ve never met them—and I have met many thousands of people all around the world.  I’m far from a hermit living under a rock or writing articles from my mother’s basement.  Those descriptions do not apply to me in any way, shape or form. I know a lot about people and different countries, their religions, their histories, and their philosophic elements.  I am very good at seeing what is in people’s hearts because over time I have learned to read them by the kind of work they produce.  You can tell a lot about people by what they make in life—and work is something that most people reveal about themselves.  If they don’t like to work, they are typically very lazy people who can’t be trusted. If they work hard they tend to be good people in all aspects of their lives.  Hard workers therefore are good people, bad workers are not.    I have spent thirty years working every odd job that I think exists at every level of society.  I’ve at many times worked two full-time jobs at separate places for years on end, with only one car in our household.  During those periods I rode a bicycle to work all year-long in every possible weather condition.  Additionally I am seldom late or miss work, and I always give at least 100% to whatever I’m doing whether it’s flipping burgers or arranging multi-million dollar deals.  I like to work, I like to make things, and I love outperforming the people around me.  And I never let anything stop me from an objective—death, sickness—anything.  I’ve actually been in fistfights with people who felt so guilty by my work ethic that they’ve wanted to fight me to bully me into not making them look so bad.  This has actually happened a lot, and I’ve worked in some of the toughest types of places that there are—machine shops, union driven assembly plants, down-and-out fast food workers, janitors, tree trimmers, I actually did car repos for a time and have performed work as a body guard—so we’re not talking about powder puff golf club types or weekend warriors.  I’ve hauled around popular sports figures and helped them through tough times at late night parking lot brawls when they ran their mouths too much—I’ve been there and seen it all.  Saying all that, nobody from my past can come forward to say that they got the better of me in any way.  Nobody was able to bully me into some sort of compromise—on any topic large or small, and nobody can say that they worked harder at anything than me.  That may sound bold, and arrogant to people, but it’s a fact of life.  At 47 years old there are no demons in my closet anywhere in the world who can say otherwise.  That makes me uniquely position to say what I will next.

Just because some slob from a local trailer park who would rather watch Jerry Springer all day while on welfare applies for a job to keep their checks coming as a minimum requirement to receive their government money applies to a job like Mar-a-Lago it doesn’t mean they are qualified.  A warm body does not constitute a good hard worker.  Often you have to interview hundreds of people just to find one good worker.  It is very tricky business and it takes a lot of discretion and personal honesty.  Government people, and Rubio and Cruz certainly fall into that category now in my mind—assume that if an applicant applies for a job and they are American citizens that they are automatically qualified as a warm body for that position.  Not so.  Let me tell you.  All workers are not equal, in spite of what the government and the laws they write try to pretend.  Some are great, some are terrible, some workers are just flat-out lazy and want to collect a pay check for doing the absolute minimum.  When you are at Mar-a-Lago, if you are Donald Trump you want someone who says, “yes sir,” “no sir,” holds the door open for people, is generally of good hygiene and competent.  You expect quality. If all 300 of those reported applicants are not of good quality—they will not be good for the job.  A lot of times these deficiencies force big employers like Donald Trump to look outside of the country for good help. 

I personally love people from other countries because they remind me of my grandparents.  Both my grandparents had working farms and they were very hard workers. I grew up with great examples of people who weren’t afraid of hard work and they judged lazy people as worthless.  It certainly made an impact on me—I took many of those lessons to heart at a very young age. I never liked my teachers in public school or in college—but I always found I got along well with employers.  Teachers were people who often couldn’t do things in the real word and I knew that—so I fought with them incessantly because I deemed them too lazy to face the real world outside of the classroom.  Employers made things happen and I always respected that. The only people who I find these days, after two generations of complete social destruction by our education system who think the way I do about work ethics often come from other countries.  Immigrants from Europe (East Germany, Romania, Poland), Africa, India, Mexico and Asia generally work their asses off, and they actually enjoy it because they feel it reflects the quality of person they are.  They work hard in America because for most of them unlike their country of origin they get to keep their money—so they have no trouble working 12 to 14 hour days because they actually enjoy amassing wealth.  Many foreign-born Americans I know who have only been in America for a decade or so have their cars and houses paid off, and they still work a full-time job and a part-time job while they put their children through college with cash.  I love and respect that approach—like I said it reminds me of how my grandparents used to think—which is how all Americans should think. 

But many Americans who were born and raised within the United States and went through public education only to be trained to think incorrectly about most things don’t get it.  When they apply for a job, they think they are entitled to something. My generation starting getting bad about that attitude in the 1990s and the Millennials have taken it to a whole new level.  I am of a mind that I don’t even think we should have weekends.  If I had things my way Americans would have their companies operating three shifts per day seven days per week all days of the year except for perhaps Christmas—because that is a productive way to live life.  Work, play, and a healthy lifestyle all go hand in hand in my life and I expect that to be the case with everybody.  But too many people American born have been taught that a job is some kind of entitlement, that weekends are entitlements—and that sitting on their ass doing little of nothing but watching television is a right.  They forget that leisure time is not a reward for hard work performed, they assume that it’s a right to the essence of their very souls—and that attitude was adopted from the socialist trends in Europe that are just now catching up to Americans in the States. 

These days you have to interview a lot of American born people to find one good hard worker.  The best way to find them are people who were raised on farms because there is a good chance someone taught them early in life to work hard to some degree.  The worst tend to come from areas swarming with welfare recipients—it doesn’t matter their skin color.  There are always exceptions and it’s good to try to find them, but as a basic rule, that’s the way it is.    Politicians like Cruz and Rubio over the years have made labor laws assuming equality and opportunity to all—so there are legal restrictions to what you can and can’t do with employees especially ones that turn out to be less than spectacular.  But reality dictates flexibility and some method of recharging our education system into producing good workers who learn to live in an American economy instead of becoming socialist activists for a new generation—as they are today and have been for about three decades—at least. 

So you are Donald Trump and you need to complete a project ahead of time and under budget—you need workers who won’t drag ass like some dog with an itch.  You need people who will buckle down and get it done and then some.  Good work is worth more than money—finances are just a form of compensation. Trump needs people who will reach deep and pour their souls into one of his projects—and if you limit yourself to some limits a knuckle-dragging, banana eating political loser has established as the law from the perspective of know-nothings, who have never done anything productive in their lives—he might as well do as most people have and throw their arms up in frustration—buy a condo in Florida and play golf the rest of their lives—because unless you love to work hard—the pain in the ass that it is to make ANYTHING in America these days is unbearably difficult.  You almost have to be insanely hard-working to even try. 

When Trump says he wants to bring back jobs there is a two-part strategy that is far too complicated for someone like Rubio or Cruz to understand.  Nobody in government understands unless they have been in the trenches and actually done private sector work.  First you have to bring back the jobs that were sent overseas through corporate inversions.  Then you have to change the education system to produce workers who can actually perform those tasks.  It’s not so much about giving someone a job in America that Trump is talking about—it’s the wealth that comes with the productivity of those jobs.  Jobs in themselves don’t make anything.  But people do, and not all people are equal—even though politicians want to believe it because their pandering statements make the toothless chain-smoking, trailer trash, casino addicts think they are equal to a worker who wakes up looking forward to a productive day and hesitates taking a break because it makes them feel they are wasting precious time.  Any successful person understands this basic discrepancy.  Trump certainly does and he has worked within the law to find the best possible workers for his various projects.  But back in the Trump Tower days, there was no other option with the way labor unions try to bend you over backwards every five seconds.  You have to have competitive labor to protect yourself from socialist union activism.  Politicians created that limited labor aspect through their laws and policy which using the Department of Labor, heavily favors labor unions.  So if you want to build something, you have to think outside the box within legal parameters of course to find the best people for a project—whether the job is big like Trump Tower or small like job Mar-a-Lago.  Productive enterprise cannot be constrained by law and political short-sightedness to believe that a job of any kind can be filled by any ol’ warm body.  It can’t.  Jobs are opportunities for productivity, and that is a magical thing—and not everyone is capable of comprehending that magic and the wonder it often brings when it’s done well. 

Rubio and Cruz clearly didn’t understand the definition of good labor at that debate—but then again, few people really do.   But they do know big labor and how to make a pitch for their monopoly on productive work and the ability to shut down effort to drive up costs due to a lack of competition by the more ambitious.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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