Tag: warrior

The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics

There comes many times over any given year where I find myself in a situation that in order to explain a basic elementary ideal to someone who requires a vast background education just to grapple with the topic at hand, I have to find some way to show them a proper metaphor to bring them up to speed.  They do not have the foundation understanding to build anything of merit conversation wise–when they ask a question, or series of questions just to understand the answer given to them.  Sadly, modern culture has failed to deliver those foundations to the last couple of generations.  There is a part of me that feels sorry for those people, but not to the extent where I am willing to sacrifice my own happiness to quell their suffering.  The reason is logic and a foundation belief system that is rooted in another time when the world made a lot more sense.  It wasn’t however that long ago, but just long enough for modern society to completely revert to the animal mindset of a scribble.

I feel fortunate to have grown up in a time when one of my favorite cartoons was called The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics which played continuously on the Looney Tunes half hour afternoon lineup every day after school.  It was my favorite cartoon as a young kid which came out in 1965 and was directed by my favorite animator, Chuck Jones.  I watched his cartoons as a child and read his book as a young man in my twenties and soaked up every word.  That particular cartoon was a masterpiece and a needed lesson for every young male looking for love.  Watch that classic cartoon below before continuing:

That cartoon reflects an interesting period in American history, and such a time is mandated to return.  Because if it doesn’t, there will not be a civilization to behold in any capacity.  The cartoon is about values and the three-way romance between a dot, a line, and a scribble.  In 2014 America, it is the scribbles who rule the world in virtually every aspect of our society.  As a line who has forced himself to bend into many angles, I understand the line in the story very, very well.

The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics (ISBN 1-58717-066-3) is a book written and illustrated by Norton Juster, first published by Random House in 1963. The story was inspired by Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, in which the protagonist visits a one-dimensional universe called Lineland, where women are dots and men are lines.

In 1965, famed animator Chuck Jones and the MGM Animation/Visual Arts studio adapted The Dot and the Line into a 10-minute animated short film for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, narrated by Robert Morley with the narration almost verbatim to the book. The Dot and the Line won the 1965 Academy Award for Animated Short Film.[1] It was entered into the Short Film Palme d’Or competition at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival.[2]

The cartoon was released as a special feature on the The Glass Bottom Boat DVD in 2005. The cartoon is also featured on the 2008 release of Warner Brothers Home Entertainment Academy Awards Animation Collection and the 2011 release of the Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 1 Blu-ray box-set on the third disc as a special feature. In 2005, Robert Xavier Rodriguez made a musical setting of the book for narrator and chamber ensemble with projected images, and in 2011 he made a version for full orchestra.

The story details a straight line who is hopelessly in love with a dot. The dot, finding the line to be stiff, dull, and conventional, turns her affections toward a wild and unkempt squiggle. The line, unable to fall out of love and willing to do whatever it takes to win the dot’s affection, manages to bend himself and form an angle. He works to refine this new ability, creating shapes so complex that he has to label his sides and angles to keep his place.

The dot realizes that she has made a mistake: what she had seen in the squiggle to be freedom and joy was nothing more than chaos and sloth. She leaves with the line, having realized that he has much more to offer, and the punning moral is presented: “To the vector belong the spoils.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dot_and_the_Line

Clearly the story of the dot and the line is a morality tale about values; the scribble didn’t have much to offer the dot once she realized that the line had advanced himself into a sophisticated dynamic.  To my young mind it took me nearly twenty years to forgive the dot for neglecting the line in the first place running off with the scribble.  I always sympathized with the line and always—always hated the scribble.  Hate actually may not be a strong enough word—but the human language has not yet come up with something stronger—so for now we’ll let it stand.  But as the years moved on and my life experiences filled me with observation I realized that the journey of the dot running toward the scribble is what drove the line to become better.  If such a thing never happened, the line would have remained one-dimensional and un-sensational.

I have learned throughout time that many women behave like the dot in the story.  They are drawn toward the scribbles of existence constantly pursuing a fantasy of reforming them—mothering them into health.  Women are often not interested in a straight line which does not require their love and affection—they are almost biologically drawn toward scribbles by default.  This is a painful realization if you were born to be a line.  However, if competition is embraced, the line can become something more than normal and if he forces himself to the task, can become much more powerful than the scribbles of existence.  The dot is the female goddess who brings out in the clash of males the best between the two through competitions for her affection.  Without that bar of measurement, then scribbles are the default mode of males.  What has happened to our current society is that females have given up hope of ever seeing a refined line and are just giving up and falling for scribbles.  If scribbles rule the world, then the world becomes their image.  Without the refined, well-managed—articulate lines—the world crumbles.

In this romance the dot plays her part in being the vehicle of transformation of the line into something better.  The scribble plays his part as a rival for the line to work against, but the line is most important—because it is he who brings order and morality to the world through his refined action.  Without that understanding, there is no way for any contemporary conversation about value between males and females to take place.  But make no mistake about it—the villain of life itself is the scribble.  The morality of the scribble is not something to be cherished on any level—but despised and beaten utterly.  There is no choice in the matter.  It is the way things have to be.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Why You Should Cancel Your Membership To The Chamber of Commerce: The hidden hand of politics

The Chamber of Commerce in any local town in America is filled with second-handers who seek to use the thin disguise of “team building” exercises to leech off the truly productive and steer those same minds politically into their desired—collective direction.  In my home town it was the Superintendent of Lakota hired by Lynda O’Conner who immediately worked on the members of No Lakota Levy through the Chamber of Commerce to sway them away from any kind of public dialogue that might prevent the public school of Lakota from achieving a tax increase.  The goal was to facilitate opinion through networking with Chamber membership and if they could not change their mind about taxing themselves into oblivion—they might at least shut their mouths publicly.  At the Four Bridges Country Club in fact on August 12th 2014 Lynda is the emcee for a Chamber discussion about the Affordable Care Act.  Members of the Chamber, non members, and walk-ins are welcome of course—and hand-holding is deeply encouraged.  After all, what better way to associate with others at the elegant Four Bridges Country Club than through Chamber activity and once there—a subtle stream of collective oriented politics uttered by second-handers permeates the events.  (For those not familiar with a popular term I use regarding second-handers—they are people who live off the efforts of other people.)  It is not uncommon for local celebrities to speak at such functions so to bring a gravitas of influence that may be used for leverage at a later date—otherwise known as “networking.”

This use of celebrity arranged by Chamber of Commerce groups all over the country is quite common.  Many of these members, just as they are in my town, believe they are staunch Republicans—like Patti Alderson whose husband Dick will receive the Everest Award at the Cincinnati Marriott North on August 15th 2014, an event emceed by Clyde Gray of Channel 9, with Archie Griffin as the keynote speaker.  (No wonder Channel 9 pulled away from covering the Lakota levy opposition)  One of the sponsors of this event is the Cox Media Group who runs the local newspaper……hmmmm, isn’t it interesting how all these things go together.  Patti has the ear of the Governor of Ohio as well as the current Speaker of the House and she has her name on virtually every charity event that local Chamber members are a part of, and politics is a big part of these occasions—even though nobody actually talks about politics.  They talk around them—but always there is a subtle push to support the collective opinion of the membership leaders—like Patti who supports higher taxes, lame duck politicians (like her good friend John Boehner,) and lots of touchy feely second-hander efforts of community—because she is the definition of second-hander behavior.

On the national stage The Chamber team was scrounging around for ideas, desperate for a silver bullet that might alter the course of the many close campaigns around the country where Tea Party challengers were going up against deeply entrenched Republicans.  The national Chamber teams enlisted famous Republicans like Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush to star in television ads for their favored candidates. The formula had paid off. In the Georgia Senate race, they looked beyond politics, convincing Herschel Walker, the iconic University of Georgia football hero whose in-state star power is second only to Jesus, to cut an ad supporting Jack Kingston, the Chamber-backed candidate.

They needed something similar in Mississippi. That’s when Pickering, an acquaintance of former NFL quarterback legend and southern Mississippi native Brett Favre, piped up.

“I think I can get to Brett,” Pickering said.

Reed pulled out his cell phone immediately and thrust it across the table. “Call him.”

The idea set off a madcap scramble to locate Favre, convince him to get involved in a political campaign, and produce a television ad compelling enough to pierce the political clutter on TV and sway new voters who hadn’t participated in the primary, which Cochran lost by only 1,400 votes. An initial survey of the runoff, conducted in the days after the June 3 primary by Chamber pollster Tony Fabrizio, showed Cochran trailing McDaniel by eight points.

“We knew the clock was ticking,” Reed recalls. “Our strategy was to grow the electorate. It was the only way to win. We knew if it was a closed primary, we would have lost. So we made a play for Reagan Democrats. Bubba. And who better than Brett? Especially in southern Mississippi where he is an icon, and where Thad had underperformed.”

It took three days to track down Favre, who was out of the state on vacation. The Chamber also sought out Eli Manning, another NFL standout who starred at Ole Miss. But he passed on the idea. By Monday, just eight days before the runoff, Favre agreed to shoot a pro-Cochran ad on his farm near Hattiesburg. Favre’s parents were schoolteachers; they sold him with Cochran’s promise to protect federal education funding.

“Brett is not a political guy,” says Rob Engstrom, who, along with Reed, helms the Chamber’s political operation. “But when we talked to him about it, he looked at it and said, ‘This is about our state.’ It appealed to him. He said yes right away.”

Back at Chamber headquarters in Washington, across the street from the White House, Reed and Engstrom scrambled the jets.

Their go-to film crew drove through the night across the Gulf Coast from Pensacola, Florida, to Hattiesburg. Their creative director caught a seat on the last flight south out of Dulles. Tuesday morning was spent shooting the commercial on Favre’s 460-acre farm.

Satisfied with the footage, the film crew flew back to Washington that night. The ad was in edit the next morning, and by Wednesday night the commercial — which showed Favre sitting on the bed of a truck, telling viewers that “Thad Cochran always delivers” — was shipped to television stations in Mississippi. The Chamber put $100,000 behind the spot every day for the final six days of the campaign.

Brett Favre, who grew up near Hattiesburg, starred in a Chamber-produced TV spot for Thad Cochran in Mississippi that saturated airwaves in the state for the final week of the runoff election.  Cochran pulled off a miracle, winning in narrow and dramatic fashion by only 6,700 votes — a result still being disputed by a flabbergasted McDaniel campaign.

It wasn’t the Chamber’s ad alone that did it. The Cochran campaign made a concerted push to grow turnout after the primary, a push that involved recruiting African-American voters and Republicans who might have otherwise stayed home. Other outside allies coordinated to do the same. But the Chamber’s role in helping drag Cochran over the finish line is undisputed.

“The guys at the Chamber are pros,” says Henry Barbour, a veteran GOP operative and Cochran supporter who ran a super PAC supporting the candidate. “They helped orchestrate an overall strategic effort that at the end of the day helped Sen. Cochran close the margins and win the election.”

The Mississippi runoff was a signal moment for the Chamber in what’s quickly becoming the most aggressive political cycle in its 102-year history.

The conservative-leaning outfit, known mainly for its heavyweight policy and lobbying practices — it spent $74 million on lobbying in 2013, according to the Center For Responsive Politics — has emerged as one of the most powerful actors in American political campaigns, with roughly $17 million spent so far on Senate and House races, all of it on behalf of Republicans friendly to the business community.

In doing so, the Chamber has planted itself firmly on the front line of the GOP establishment’s push to extinguish tea party ideologues wherever they threaten business-backed candidates — in Mississippi, Alabama, Ohio, Kentucky, and elsewhere.

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2014/politics/hamby-midterms-chamber-tea-party/?utm_source=Tea+Party+Patriots+List&utm_campaign=b62cefdc37-Fundraising_5_235_23_2013&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1649e1cb69-b62cefdc37-235685329

I can attest to this effectiveness, it was through Chamber membership that many of my members of the No Lakota Levy were convinced to sit on their hands and keep quiet during the Lakota tax increase of 2013.  I am not a member of the Chamber Alliance—which is what it is called in my community.  At the links below, a quick look will tell why.  In their publication called the “The Voice” by reading the March edition we were told by Lynne Rhul and Denise DiStasi that “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” which is an enormously stupid statement.  Further during their March 2014 luncheon those two brilliant minds of entrepreneurship stated that there are three main problems with false perceptions of observation—the first is the belief that your way is the right way, even though some of your actions are just based on habit. The second is the fear of the unknown, and the third main problem is making assumptions, including those based on looks or cultural stereotypes.  All those things can be applied to how we do business.  Lynne further stated that “all life has value, otherwise we would feel entitled to treat others poorly–respect should not be earned, but rather given.”  Oh, isn’t that so sweet—and when Lynne said it—the heads in the room were nodding—YES.  It is in events like that luncheon that much damage is done in politics.  What Lynne Rhul and Denise DiStasi were articulating were basic progressive politics uttered behind the perceptual façade of a conservative business oriented organization.

https://www.thechamberalliance.com/

If that wasn’t enough jump up to the June/July edition of a ”The Voice” at the link below and read about the Leadership 21 segment from William Greenwald—the founder and chief “Neuroleaderologist” from the Windsor Leadership Group.  He says that the best way to manage stress is to:

  • Exercise, exercise, exercise (it’s like “cognitive candy” for the brain)
  • Recruit positive emotions (e.g. watch a funny movie, get together with a friend, recruit happy memories.)
  • Control your physiological arousal (e.g. deep breath exercises)
  • Perform a spiritual activity (e.g. visit your church or take time to say a prayer for someone else.)
  • Practice mindfulness techniques and self-reflect on forms of gratitude.

Seriously, have a look for yourself.

https://www.thechamberalliance.com/pages/Voice/

So I am not a part of my local Chamber.  It is a cesspool of second-handers who want suck off the efforts of those who are actually doing things in the world—taking their money and using their influence gained to manipulate celebrity, finance, politics, and the media to steer society into a progressive direction.  The only use that Chamber of Commerce organizations have for their members is to provide a social outlet for people to bang wine glasses together occasionally and feel sophisticated.  But what really occurs is that those who are truly sophisticated are used to prop up those who are not and usually it is the ring masters of these events who are doing the leeching.  They don’t have a quality event unless the best and brightest from the community attend their luncheons, and ceremonies.  So I stay away.

When it is wondered why nothing ever happens in politics and why the status quo seems unmovable—it is because the money that feeds the political machine is either funneled through local Chambers of Commerce or the people who possess such money have their minds encumbered with progressive tripe like the examples provided—spoon fed to them by their local Chamber leaders.    All these nice ideas about “all life has value, otherwise we would feel entitled to treat others poorly, respect should not be earned, but rather given,” sound nice while having a luncheon with what everyone thinks are the smartest minds of West Chester nibbling on a catered lunch—but in reality those people haven’t visited a neighborhood in downtown Hamilton recently where crack addicts have destroyed themselves and their children, or the prostitutes on East Avenue continue to spread disease and mayhem to scum bag husbands cheating on their wives—some of which were at that same luncheon.  It is reckless, and foolish for Lynne Rhul to preach “no judgment” when everything that one should do in business is make decisions based on judgment—and leadership—not that kind of crap that William Greenwald is talking about—but the kind of leadership that can see things happening for they actually arrive—being at the front of the train instead of in the back—being on the “cutting edge.”  Greenwald through the Chamber wastes enormous amounts of productive time steering members toward ridiculous stress management techniques that might as well be taken from an Indian bathing in the Ganges.  Following those methods will not lead a community to victory and productive enterprise—it will lead to a dirt road in the middle of a third world country.

But what’s worse than the progressive opinions of these contributors are the hidden efforts to keep the politics of a community from drifting too conservatively away from progressive strategies.  I know many of the people who are members of my local Chamber—especially Lynda O’Conner—and even though she sells herself to conservative groups and comes to conservative events—she is not a conservative—not in the way that I am, that’s for sure.  And Patti Alderson is of the same mind as Lynda.  Those two ladies might be good for arranging a picnic and raising money for some hungry kids, but they have no place “leading” a community to anything with the title “leadership” at its heading—which the Chamber of Commerce groups all across the nation continuously abuse.  Chamber of Commerce organizations all across America are simply deployment stations for second-handers who need to suck off the energy of the truly productive.  Many people who operate businesses believe that they must take part in these activities—there is a bit of vanity in them which desires to be loved by other human beings for the power and wealth they have accumulated—so they participate because of the social aspects.  But they cannot keep second-handers from sucking off of them and then using that looted value to manipulate politics back toward moderate positions contaminated by progressive influence.

If you dear reader really want to fix the world—you should withdrawal your Chamber of Commerce memberships.  For those who really want to succeed in business, you won’t learn much from the people who are emcees at Chamber events—and what you do learn will be all the wrong types of things.  “Judgment” in business is one of the most important aspects of it—and when it is asserted that judgments should be avoided—you know you are talking to an idiot when it comes to fiscal responsibility, and business enterprise.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Welcome To The Wasteland: I told you people……………..

I’m not surprised and neither should you dear reader. For around a decade now I’ve been warning about the world we’re living in. People have avoided direct knowledge of this crisis by removing the evidence—which has resulted in many firings from jobs, editorial censorship, and social castigation. They have also sought to inebriate themselves with intoxicants, or hide behind those mind altering substances with social orthodox. But they cannot hide from the terrible reality that under their watch—they have destroyed the world and the United States for the next generation out of their sheer stupidity, arrogance, and pretension. The impact of this debacle was covered on a recent O’Reilly Factor Talking Points Memo which released the most recent poll numbers from Americans who normally lean left. The situation is not good at all, and the people who have avoided knowing about the severity of this problem are to blame. You get the world you deserve—due to the contents of what you put into your minds. This is what you get.

In a lot of ways I’ve already moved on beyond this crisis. I know longer feel a need to report daily on the kind of issues warning like Paul Revere what threats are on the horizon. The threats are now here and people either used the knowledge or they are suffering as a result. But there is no debate as to the validity of my warnings—or those others out there who have spent considerable time trying to save fools from the plight of their own stupidity.

Sadly most of my articles most read on a daily basis are those I wrote years ago—as people are just now arriving at the conclusion that they need to learn more about those particular issues. While it is nice to see that they are interested, they are about 3 to 4 years too late now to avert the impact. It’s too late. It is as if a light suddenly came on and the masses turned off E Television, or the afternoon tabloids and realized that they screwed everything up and want to suddenly fix it—but can’t. It takes a long time to arrive at this point, and it requires so much apathy—and it’s simply too late. It will take generations to repair the damage now—the inevitable debacle of mismanagement is unavoidable.

My daily emphasis naturally will change from warnings to repair. There is no longer time to save who we can—it is now time to write off those who have failed, or will fail and concentrate on those who can fix things. So my tone and content will naturally change. I have to help those who can be helped. Just like I spent the last dozen years writing about how to avoid this current America, I will now put the needs of the world a dozen years out from now so that those people will have the tools to solve the riddles presented then. But there is no time for regret at the sense of loss in seeing the first generation of America leave the world less than it found it drifting out to sea lost to time and sympathy. They did it to themselves with sheer apathy and neglect.

On Adult Swim recently I watched the premier of Black Jesus—a comedy show about a modern Black Jesus who smokes pot and tries to save members of the “hood” with compassion. It was a ridiculously stupid show and was terrifying ignorant. But—it represents modern culture and there is no way the people those actors are portraying which have real life counterparts in urban areas—are equipped intellectually to deal with modern problems. After Black Jesus sat with a group of guys smoking dope I turned the show off and found on VH1 a show where a couple were swimming together naked, then showered next to the pool. It was a dating show, and the ritual of romance had been cheapened to such an extent that their public nudity wasn’t a big deal in the least. There was nothing taboo in the presentation—and that’s the problem. There is no way the couple presented will ever be equipped to solve any problems in their lives let alone their country. They represent a generation lost to sheer animal action between promiscuity and bodily pleasure. There is nothing intellectual about their life—so they have no capacity to solve intellectual problems—only physical ones. Out of 60+ channels on television at 11:00 PM there was really nothing on and society is feeding off that content. The by-product is the collapse of politics, philosophy, art, entertainment, economic power, and every endeavor of productive enterprise. Welcome to the wasteland of T.S. Eliot—a creation directly brought to America by Europe.

I warned you people………………….

People thought they could neglect the topics of the day and not pay attention to what was being written in the newspapers. They thought they could have government employees teach their children without impact, and adhere to ideals that are corrupt to logic. But they couldn’t. And now there is Hell to pay, and we have only seen the first payment. It will get much, much worse from here. The old school ways still function in the world to a small extent. In a few years, there will be no common sense left. Our society the world over will be filled with the kind of people who think that Black Jesus is a funny show, and have filled their minds with tripe from VH1 reality television shows—and lived nearly exclusively existences in social media.

My focus will change to the next decade, to the people who are not yet lost—to their hopes and ambition. Everyone else had their time and chance, and they blew it.

Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

A New X-Wing: Capitalism helps a ‘Force for Change’ benefit the world

Charity is only a bad thing when the altruism involved masks other behavior designed to win social favor instead of genuinely using productive excess to help those suffering from stifled freedom.  The Star Wars: Force for Change initiative, linked below, is one of the good ones.  The intent is to bring the benefits of capitalism to the far reaches of planet earth, and that is wonderful.  There are many children suffering under countries with poor political philosophies or economic systems that do not capture the natural innovation of their inhabitants—but instead stifles them needlessly.  Force for Change is intended to use the excess of capitalism created by the mythology of Star Wars into actually making people’s lives better which is something everyone should emphatically support.  And as usual, J.J. Abrams has provided a teaser of the new movie, Episode VII in a final week push to drive up the numbers.

 

http://forceforchange.starwars.com/

The new ship looks like a classic Z-95 Headhunter from the pre-years of the X-Wing fighter seen in the original trilogy.  But the claims are that it is a new kind of updated X-Wing—whatever the case it looks fantastic and is proof that the crew working on the new Star Wars film is going to extraordinary measures to produce something wonderful.   The clever presentation of the Force for Change material during the production of Star Wars hints at the level of creativity emerging from the endeavor and is truly something to be excited about.

It will be hard to avoid this new Star Wars movie once it is released—so news from it is important to everyone, even those who are not dedicated fans of the series.  Star Wars is a direct creation of capitalism and without it there would not be a Force for Change initiative and a number of other charities which trickle off the mythology that takes place “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.”  Certainly under no socialist government could Star Wars have been made, and it is particularly under socialist style governments that many of the children the Force for Change is attempting to help.  England is hardly a bastion of capitalism, but they are also directly benefiting from the production of Star Wars being shot in their country—in England over a billion pounds of wealth was created by production companies filming in and around London—Star Wars among the most notable and Abu Dhabi has seen an increase by 19% in hotel reservations from fans all over the world traveling to the left behind film sites to visit the location of the Episode VII props.  Without a story nothing would be shot in London or Abu Dhabi and without that story meaning anything to anybody, there would be no desire to pay money to buy plane tickets to fly to such places just to take pictures of what was left behind during the creation process.

And that is what J.J. Abrams is doing in his Force for Change videos; he is using the props created for the film—which will be seen by hundreds of millions of people the world over.  The film may generate $1 billion in global revenue just in the first two weeks—which is astonishing.  It will likely go on to make several billion more dollars dwarfing anything previously done by any film anywhere, because the buildup is so intense.  But on top of that Walmart, Target, and anywhere Star Wars toys are sold will see sharp increases in profit.  Fast-food tie-ins will dramatically increase their sales with promotional campaigns.  And the Disney Parks will also see spikes in attendance and interest in their new property from t-shirts to DVD sales.  J.J. Abrams knowing all this is using the props from the film already used to tell the story as a way to help some kids suffering from the lack of creativity their economies have imprisoned them to—and that is a wonderful thing.

Star Wars is capitalism at its best and is something worthy of support not just of the product itself—but the spillover it has which helps feed and clothe many millions who otherwise would not have the opportunity.  Because of Star Wars, there is a Force for Change—and the nature of that change is one of depravity to fulfillment through investment driven by passion for the subject matter.  And in that regard it is very exciting to see a new ship from a future Star Wars film.  I’m sure Fantasy Flight Games is already making plans to have it in their miniatures game which is so much fun.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Elliot Rodger’s Shooting Spree: The real cause of a terrible incident–sex, not guns

Watch this video before reading the rest of the article.  The video is from Elliot Rodger the alleged gunman from the latest rampage in California and shows exactly why he went on a shooting spree stabbing and shooting to death six people.  I thought of leaving this topic alone and not covering out of respect for the families until a grieving father of one of the victims blamed the NRA for the death of his son—giving progressives fuel for the fire of gun grabbing legislation.  He desired to use his grief as a platform for more gun control mandating a proper analysis of this terrible shooting—which starts with this video.

The following contents come from a below linked YouTube video with some basic editing inserting additional information:

The father of one of the six victims gunned down on Friday night by Elliot Rodger blamed the NRA and politicians for the death of his only son, Christopher Martinez. He shouted with grief at a press conference: ‘You don’t think it will happen to your child until it does.’ (NY Daily News) ‘Sexually frustrated’ Santa Barbara killer promised to ‘kill as many people as possible’ The hate-filled son of Hollywood director Peter Elliot was identified Saturday as the gunman who killed six people in a murderous rampage near a California college.  Chin Elliot, the mother of the shooter read a 130+ page email by her son that sent her frantically calling her ex-husband who was dining with his new wife and friends.  The two parents raced to Isla Vista in an attempt to stop the slaughter they knew was coming—but were too late. 

Shooter Elliot Rodger, 22, posted an incendiary YouTube rant promising a slaughter of sorority sisters and strangers on the street hours before the night of murder that ended in his suicide.

The killer stabbed three men to death at his Isla Vista apartment before he embarked on the killing spree that also wounded 13 people on Friday night.

In a 130+-page manifesto, described as a “rambling autobiography” by Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown, detailed Rodger’s life story and his plan to kill his roommates. “I would have to kill my housemates to get them out-of-the-way,” he wrote. “In fact, I’d even enjoy stabbing them both to death while they slept.”

Two of the three bodies pulled from the Rodger apartment have been confirmed as the roommates.

Rodger killed himself behind the wheel of his pricey black BMW after a deadly fire fight with Santa Barbara Sheriff’s deputies.  The lone gunman carved a football-field length path of carnage, near the campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara, which included a total of 10 locations with 12 separate crime scenes, Brown said at a press conference Saturday night.

Three of the victims have been identified as Veronika Weiss, 19, Katie Cooper and Christopher Martinez.

Martinez’s father, Richard, shouted with grief and blamed “craven” and “irresponsible” politicians and the NRA for the death of his only son at a press conference on Saturday. You don’t think it will happen to your child until it does,” Martinez said as he held a photo of his son as a child playing baseball. “Chris was a really great kid, ask anyone who knew him. His death has left our family lost and broken. “When will this insanity stop,” the crying dad screamed. He added, “We should say to ourselves, ‘Not one more,” before he dropped the mic and stormed away from the podium.

A lawyer for Rodger’s father confirmed the son’s involvement to ABC News. The deranged gunman announced his plans for mass murder in a deeply disturbing seven-minute video.  You denied me a happy life, and in turn I will deny all of your life,” the baby-faced Rodger says at one point before offering a chilling laugh. “It’s only fair. I hate all of you.

“If I had it in my power, I would stop at nothing to reduce every single one of you to mountains of skulls and rivers of blood, and rightfully so.”

The deadly shooting spree lasted for six terrifying minutes, with Rodger involved in two shootouts with sheriff’s deputies before he was discovered inside the BMW with a gunshot wound to his head.  The chilling and creepy YouTube clip, titled “Elliot Rodger’s Retribution,” offered insights into the twisted mind behind the remorseless rampage.

Rodger’s diatribe declares both his hatred of women and his violent intentions to take revenge for years of rejection. He promises to shoot up a sorority house on the UCSB campus as payback.

The disturbed speaker says he’s a virgin who never as much as kissed a girl.

“On the day of retribution, I am going to enter the hottest sorority house of UCSB and I will slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up blond slut I see inside there,” he announces. “All those girls that I’ve desired so much.”

“I’ll take great pleasure in slaughtering all of you,” he says later. “You will finally see that I am in truth the superior one. The true alpha male.

He then pauses for another horrifying laugh.

Rodger’s father is a Hollywood director and assistant director whose credits include work on “The Hunger Games.”According to Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown, investigators were “analyzing both written and videotaped evidence that suggests this atrocity was a premeditated mass murder.”

The gunman, of Calabasas, Calif., arrived in Isla Vista driving a black BMW and opened fire at 9:27 p.m. Friday, Brown said.  Bullets were soon flying through the darkness as the shooter blasted away from behind the wheel of his car, with one witness saying as many as 20 shots were fired.

“I heard shots, screams, pain,” student Michael Vitak told KEYT-TV after the shooting.

Vitak said he watched in horror as one woman was killed and a second seriously wounded. “I hope she is going to be fine,” he said. 

Eyewitness Nikolaus Becker was sitting outside The Habit Burger Grill when he heard the pop-pop-pop of what he thought were firecrackers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iLliJJ8Sig

To even begin to ascertain that the shooting spree in California involving Elliot Rodger could have been eliminated with more stringent gun control is to ignore the real culprit in this case which is far more to blame.  Even if guns were removed from every single individual in the world—the root cause of the shooter’s behavior would persist.  The evidence of this case points toward the relationship of Elliot and his father Peter as the real problem.   Young men need from their fathers guidance on the matters of sexual pursuits and during a time when Elliot needed his father—there was a divorce in his family and a new woman took his father away.  Divorce happens to a lot of kids, and it hurts them.  But Elliot had the added complications of Asperger’s syndrome and a pampered life where values are often cheapened without reference.  Often parents in cases like Chin and Peter Elliot throw money at their children hoping to appease them as they pursue their career paths.  In Peter’s life, his only major film credit is The Hunger Games—so he has been busy social-climbing in Hollywood to earn his next work which appears to have interfered with the development of his son.

Are the parents at fault for the deaths caused by their son Elliot Rodger………..yes.  Should they rake themselves over the coals over it–no.  They are victims themselves of a society that believes families can be wrecked and rebuilt like Lego blocks openly accepting progressive lifestyles which led to the detriment of their son.  Other families manage to raise children who do not go on shooting rampages, but their children are never-the-less distraught the same.  They just don’t go to the added level of acting on their anxiety as Rodger did.

To stab to death his roommates is a very personal way to kill, and it would have occurred whether or not there were more gun laws.  Rodger was going to kill people one way or another because sex was a mystery to him—he wanted it, and he couldn’t find it, and he was angry about it.  It was his parent’s job to help him solve that problem, but they didn’t take an active role—and the result is what occurred.  In a world driven by sex, a young man needs to at least experience such things and the parents need to advise him how to get there.

I have some knowledge of this problem.  I had two friends who were really close to me who had similar difficulties.  Both were very intelligent—in some ways too intelligent to play the mating games women often want to play—biologically.  So they entered past their 18th birthdays without kissing girls and the pressure was incredibly difficult for them.   Both of my friends had difficulties with their parents–one was too Christian and the other was too progressive—both led to extremes in the family environment.  If my friends had been less intelligent, they might have not noticed so much, but because they were—they found it impossible to please their parents and attract a mate making sex impossible. For one I took a collection to buy him his first sexual experience—just to get the monkey off his back.  Once he had his experience, women naturally detected his lack of virginity and it helped him launch into relationships that allowed for sex with girls.  The other friend resisted my offer for another six years being a good Christian and all.  Finally he let me buy him a private stripper which put a real naked woman in front of him.  There was no sex, but it did help, and a few years later he found a woman who wanted to have sex with him and found his guilt over the stripper incident cutely naive.  She married him and they are still that way to this day.  I’m not typically a supporter of the silly didactic sexual stuff, but it is a primary biological need.  Adults need to see that their children learn to care for their basic needs, and sex is one of them—just like eating is.  Every man needs to show their sons how to behave in a confident fashion that wins the hearts of women.  If that does not happen, a man does a son a terrible disservice.

Peter Rodger should have helped his son solve this problem three years prior at age 19 when it was obvious that the young man was not able to convince girls to undress for him on his own.  Once the momentous occasion of sexual interaction occurs for young men, they find that all subsequent activity becomes much more natural—so a dad can certainly help a son with this problem by at least putting a naked woman near the boy so that all the emotions of such a thing can be dealt with avoiding the awkwardness more experienced girls of the same age will feel when dealing with a male virgin in the height of their sexual years.  This should be done to assist the boy in living a productive life, not just in preventing shooting sprees.

This topic is difficult for people to even discuss—and ultimately that is the reason for the shooting rampage in this case.  Peter Rodger could have solved the problem by taking his son to a strip joint—which are disgusting places, but far better than having such a social meltdown.  It would certainly be a last resort, but it should never be neglected how important sex is to young men—especially in a society addicted to it.  My rational with my friends was that we often enjoyed other things besides girls—so if they could get those primal needs out-of-the-way, they would have higher quality lives that would allow them to continue enjoying more intelligent activity without distraction.  Peter should have helped his son find a girl instead of starting new relationships with new women and hanging out with the Hollywood crowd trying to find work.  The son left without a father in the home alone with his mother—had to endure a female relationship without sex with a female that his father had rejected causing all sorts of mixed up emotions—because most young men seek in their sexual mates, women who are like their mothers.  It would not surprise me that it was this problem that ultimately led to Elliot Rodger’s sexual frustration–how to defend the position of his father by rejecting his mother who is the aim of Elliot’s sexual fulfillment in potential mates.  That duality combined with Asperger’s syndrome was destructive to Elliot’s mind and was the cause of the shooting spree.  It was not caused by a gun; the act of terror was caused by a broken mind.  It was preventable not with a new law, but with love and common sense.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

The HWK-290: Preparing for war, gaming way into the night, and the start of revolutions

I have a running fantasy that someday the government will show up on my doorstep with tyrannical intentions and shred off the pretext of decency for open warfare.  At that time I will be free to do what I do best and have loved since my feet could carry me upward, and that is to fight—fight for independence, fight for respect, fight for the human race—fight for anything—but fight.  Now when I say fight, I don’t mean “serving” for some greater cause made up by a statist government.  I mean fighting where my strategy and effort destroy an opponent no matter how great the numbers or odds of victory, the worse, the more attractive.  So the fantasy of a large statist government having the audacity to believe that they will win my submission with force is an attractive one to me.

I do not make a good soldier material, or a sports player who simply does what somebody else dictates.  That is not the kind of fighting that I’m good at.  In sports I never wanted to be a player, only the coach or the owner of a franchise, never some meat head player who was simply a field soldier.  In the military, I never wanted to be a soldier, only a commander.  But the way the human race is set up, they expect people to run through some kind of social initiation period where they start on the bottom and work their way up.  However, by the time that such people find themselves in charge, they have been beaten down into submission and lose the ability to “think” uniquely.  So I avoid all structured war games like the plague, and always have.  When I play at war whether it is politics, business, or physical submission of one group over another, I require being in charge otherwise I’m just not interested.  If people shut up and listen, they find that they benefit greatly by doing what I tell them.  I don’t get out of such arrangements anything from the participates—any level of camaraderie, any back slapping from social respect—any feeling of “fitting in” to the structure of human existence.  I simply enjoy winning in games of conflict.

One of the greatest aspects of being human is that we are thinking creatures and find many ways to entertain ourselves.  Of the many things invented to entertain the human race, war games for me have always been the thing that I most enjoy.  When I was a kid I ran into tabletop war gaming from a military history class I took where famous Revolutionary War battles could be re-enacted.  As an adult my wife introduced me to similar games such as the Star Wars: Assault on Hoth which we played nearly every night during the first couple years of our marriage.  When I started having kids I played a lot of video games with them—all of which were about war, fighting, and combat.  I never approached the games as an escape from reality, but as the only way I could do the types of things I enjoyed doing without destroying the fabric of the world around me.  Then of course there was the Wiz Kids Pirate Constructible Strategy Game that I have discussed in great detail here before, which my family spent a good five solid years playing together.

As fate would have it, one of my son-in-laws is a serious table top gamer.  He plays games I never had the patience for like Magic the Gathering relentlessly and will play any board game that has ever been invented.  He simply loves games.  He along with my nephews over the past summer introduced me to the Dungeons and Dragons like game, Hero Quest which I enjoyed greatly.   But I have since discovered something much, much cooler—Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures by Fantasy Flight Games.   This game has all the things I enjoy and have only found possible since LucasArts produced the old video game X-Wing, which was a combat flight simulator that I often spent entire nights playing.  As video games became better and moved online, Star Wars: Galaxies had Jump to Hyperspace, which was the latest evolution of the old X-Wing game, but it has since left the scene since Star Wars: The Old Republic arrived.  There was a void in my heart that was there in the years between the exit of Jump to Hyperspace and the creation of Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures that wasn’t filled by anything else.  Now that I have discovered X-Wing Miniatures, it has been like revisiting my favorite games of the past with new updated spins which should be expected with evolution, and I have been soaking up.  I have enjoyed myself more since the discovery of X-Wing Miniatures than I can remember consistently in decades.  I have been buying up ships for the game like crazy and getting very serious about it.

Both of my son-in-laws have also been getting into the game, so over the weekend we went to Yattaquest in Mt. Healthy to purchase a mat for our X-Wing Miniatures game as the playing surface is supposed to be a 3’X3’ area and we wanted something nice.  So we went to Yattaquest and saw that the place was absolutely rocking with activity as they had a game night where the back room was filled with players.  I was stunned how many other people were playing these games for the same reasons that I do, and I was shocked by how many different games were on the shelf at Yattaquest.  There was an entire section for Warhammer—it was simply amazing.

  I picked up my game mat and the last two ships they had for X-Wing Miniatures, a couple of A-Wings.

http://www.yottaquest.com/

Then all my kids along with my wife went to Sci-Fi Cincinnati over in Northgate Mall and found two Y-Wing Fighters and a Tie Fighter Advanced, which are both extremely rare.  I bought them up knowing that they were selling for over $50 dollars a piece on the internet because of their rarity.  I felt I had just uncovered a gold nugget—a rare treasure and it made my entire weekend.

http://www.sci-fi-city.com/cincinnati.htm

We arrived home late after the mall had closed and began playing X-Wing as a family with the game ending at around 3 AM.  We then played most of the next day and I can report that it is some of the most fun I have had in years.  It has many of the elements that I personally enjoy more than anything, it’s about miniature detail models, strategy, technology, large concepts, and it has a creativity level that is limited only by the player—which is very attractive to me. After our very successful weekend of playing X-Wing Miniatures, I treated myself to a rare privilege; I pre-ordered a ship that I am hungry to get as a compliment to my Millennium Falcon builds, the new HWK-290.   In a 100-point game, the HWK-290 will provide for me the perfect support for my aggressive style of game play and I am very happy to see it come available as it does not technically ship to the general public until September 11th.  Fantasy Flight Games pre-released HWK-290s during Gen Con in Indianapolis, but until then and since nobody has put their hands on them.

The ship is a sentimental favorite for me; it’s from the video game called Dark Forces which my daughters used to play with me.  So it meant more than just a game piece for X-Wing Miniatures to make the purchase, I am just ecstatic that it will be coming to me.  It is a unique item that I can’t wait to put my hands on, and it feels good to have something which drums up so much happiness.  Yes, there are a lot of very bad things going on in the world, and I have written about many of them here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom.  But the new game X-Wing Miniatures has given me new juice where few things prior provided.  I simply love the game for what it does.  But more than anything it is allowing me to build a squad that has the Millennium Falcon as a tactical option with the HWK-290.

I don’t socialize much, but it was nice to see so many people with similar interests at Yattaquest.  The place was huge and very busy as business was good.  I’m obviously not alone in my love of combat because most of those games were themed around conflict resolution.  As I stood in the center of Yattaquest I had the sense that if the first American Revolution started in pubs around New England, then the second and third will be in places like Yattaquest.  The game players were simply enjoying some escapist fun while not compromising their minds in the process.  Those people are not compliant statists of the type who built the trouble of LBJ’s Great Society.  They are rebels, commanders, and tacticians that nobody else takes serious as they have fallen through the cracks of the establishment only to become the next sleeping giants awakened during the next great crises.  But never before that I can recall did so many people flock to games like Warhammer, Magic the Gathering, and X-Wing Miniatures as they do now.  I attempted with all my resources to find Y-Wing fighters but could not, because they were sold out everywhere I looked, even on Ebay and other online outlets.  I found them by chance at Sci-Fi Cincinnati and quickly bought them up.  They weren’t sold out because the company didn’t make enough of them—quite the contrary—they were sold out because the demand is that high.  I find that extremely encouraging.

I might have to wait for my fantasy of a statist government gone mad showing up on my door step to declare war against me and my family.  Obama can’t even make a decision against Syria, so I’m not worried about progressives making a visible move against the American people who would cost them terribly—because such things at least require courage, which they lack.  But until then, I love that there are games like X-Wing Miniatures that I can play with my family late into the night and all the next day.  War gaming is a good substitute for the real thing and I love being a member of the human race because it invents such things.  But one thing that is a running theme among these gamers is that submission is not an option.  They enjoy war gaming because players contemplate resistance and wish to play out scenarios that bring about such results.  The exchange is peaceful so long as participants have an outlet.  But heaven forbid that places like Yattaquest didn’t exist.  These are not the games of our grandparents, these are the direct response to large-scale statism, and the minds drawn to them are not compliant.

I’ve bought cars, homes, taken exotic vacations and raised families.  I’ve been successful, won many real battles and have enjoyed my life immensely in many capacities.  But let me just state that when I purchased the HWK-290 for $14.95 a chill of delight went up my spine that I can’t get from anything else in this world…………….and the reason is beyond the comprehension of the average statist politician.  Only people who play such games understand.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

Why Some Republicans and Democrats Want War in Syria: Protecting the United Nations with American money

Many pundits and social commentators seem baffled as to why some Republicans share with Democrats a desire for war in Syria while others share in common a desire to stay out of such an action.  It is mysterious to them that a supposed anti-war, pro peace politician like Barack Obama would support a war effort of any kind, while political “extremists” such as Sarah Palin does not.  The reason is not because one political party represents elephants while the other represents donkeys, but because they are both social progressives as the others are not, or are trying to distance themselves from such political parasites.

Progressives believe in global unity, and individual sacrifice for the greater good as defined by them.  They wish to think of the world as a giant global village and they are the chieftains.  If some terrible thing happens in Syria, then it is the job of the “international community” to do something about it once the United Nations is made aware of an evil.  In the case of Syria the crimes against the Syrian people has been known for a long time, but it was only once the United Nations inspectors supposedly saw footage, and were granted into the country to inspect conditions for themselves that progressive politicians decided that the time for action was now, rather than at any other point in time, past or future.

Progressives are not attempting to do justice to the poor people killed under a tyrannical regime.  They are simply attempting to preserve the authority of The United Nations as a world police force.  The war drums in Syria by otherwise antiwar politicians are the obvious result of these progressive types. If it was ever wondered what politicians are progressive and which actually hold the type of beliefs established under their respective political parties it has never been more obvious, or hypocritical as to whom are progressives than those who support the Syrian War.

Progressives are vile, despicable people who are destructive intellectual collectivists.  What they are fighting for is not justice in Syria for the benefit of free people.   They simply fight to preserve the reputation of the United Nations.  In the context of the global community, it is the United States that is known as the official police force in that global community—and other countries who have elected to stay out of Syrian engagement wish to see the police do their job on behalf of the United Nations, while maintaining their own disengagement from conflict due simply to the financial cost.

It is not such a mystery once this basic fact is known, who is what and why they believe the things they do.  Progressives want war because it further advances their desire for global rule under a gigantic social village where the values of The United States are erased so that the values of lower quality countries can be elevated.  Eventually all progressives hope the values of all people will be equal under the leadership of the village chieftains, the progressives. Under those terms, things are not so mysterious.  Progressives are not for American preservation, they are about advancement of United Nations influence, and the war in Syria allowing them to achieve two of their goals, to destroy the reputation of America as an independent sovereign nation, and strengthen the influence of The United Nations as a global police force.  But the war is not about preserving American independence, or fighting for freedom across the world.  That is the distinct and sorrowful difference.  The supporters of the Syrian War are united in their goal of progressive politics and that makes them dangerous to every American who supports the Constitution of The United States of America.  Progressives desire to use the resources of America to destroy it while moving all the countries of the world toward a global village ruled by a Constitution not yet written, by a society of people the progressives hope to mold from their own cloth.  It is not the Founding Fathers of America that these people hope to emulate.  They hope to become their own type of “Founding Father” in a society not yet known built on political views of the dangerous progressive, and their wholesale desire to destroy individuality at all cost.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

War in Syria: The real cause of chemical weapons in control of terrorists and dictators

I am not a supporter of military engagement in Syria by America.  If “they” do so, “they” will do it without my backing.  If “my” military must engage in the long mismanaged debacle in Syria, it is due to the incompetence of our own government—driven by progressive politics that does not represent me—but has “progressed” along to do their own thing for global reasons.  By saying such a thing I understand that the “establishment” will attempt to label people like me as a radical for not supporting our military—but so what.  I could care less.  To understand why, watch and listen to every video on this article so that you too may come to understand the real intentions, and meaning of the Syrian military engagement and what is really behind it.

Few recently have even contemplated how Syria acquired the supposed “chemical weapons” to begin with, which has set off this whole debate.  As to the question as to why America must become involved in Syria the reason is that it is highly likely the weapons came from American CIA involvement to begin with.  Here’s why:

As reported in the New York Sun on January 26, 2006:

“‘There are weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and returned to safe hands,’ Mr. Sada said. ‘I am confident they were taken over.’”

“Mr. Sada’s comments come just more than a month after Israel’s top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Moshe Yaalon, told the Sun that Saddam ‘transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria.’

“Democrats have made the absence of stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq a theme in their criticism of the Bush administration’s decision to go to war in 2003…

“The discovery of the weapons in Syria could alter the American political debate on the Iraq war. And even the accusations that they are there could step up international pressure on the government in Damascus. That government, led by Bashar Assad, is already facing a UN investigation over its alleged role in the assassination of a former prime minister of Lebanon. The Bush administration has criticized Syria for its support of terrorism and its failure to cooperate with the UN investigation.”

In September of 2002, Reid is quoted as saying:

“Saddam Hussein has, in effect, thumbed his nose at the world community, and I think the President is approaching this in the right fashion.”

And then in October of 2002, he said:

“We stopped the fighting [in 1991] on an agreement that Iraq would take steps to assure the world that it would not engage in further aggression and that it would destroy its weapons of mass destruction. It has refused to take those steps. That refusal constitutes a breach of the armistice which renders it void and justifies resumption of the armed conflict.”

And then, finally, in 2008, said:

“Now I believe, myself, that the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense…and you have to make your own decisions about what the President knows…is that this war is lost and that the surge is not accomplishing anything, as is indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday.”

I would also be equally nervous if I were Nancy Pelosi, who in December of 1998,said on her congressional website:

“Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.”

And who then said in May of 2004:

“I believe that the president’s leadership in the actions taken in Iraq demonstrate an incompetence in terms of knowledge, judgment and experience in making the decisions that would have been necessary to truly accomplish the mission without the deaths to our troops and the cost to our taxpayers…”

Read more details about this issue at the link below.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/07/14/And-where-did-syrias-chemical-weapons

But how did the weapons get to Iraq?  Well, many have long forgotten that Saddam Hussein was put in place by American desire to send Iraq into war with Iran, and the weapons likely were given to him by America, directly or indirectly, to off-set the Iranians during the Iran, Iraq war.  From 1980 to 1988 Donald Rumsfeld could be seen shaking hands with Saddam Hussein openly showing support for Iraq.

Tensions between Iran and Iraq were fueled by Iran’s Islamic revolution and its appearance of being a Pan-Islamic force, in contrast to Iraq’s Arab nationalism. Despite Iraq’s goals of regaining the Shatt al-Arab,[note 2] the Iraqi government seemed to initially welcome Iran’s Revolution, which overthrew Iran’s Shah, who was seen as a common enemy.[4][25] It is difficult to pinpoint when tensions began to build, but there were some cross border skirmishes, including when Iraqi aircraft bombed an Iranian village that anti-Iraqi Kurds allegedly hid in on June 1979.[31]

After this incident, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called on Iraqis to overthrow the Ba’ath government, and it was received with considerable anger in Baghdad.[25] On 17 July 1979, despite Khomeini’s call, Saddam gave a speech praising the Iranian Revolution and called for an Iraqi-Iranian friendship based on non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.[25] When Khomeini rejected Saddam’s overture by calling for Islamic revolution [17] in Iraq, Saddam was alarmed.[25] Iran’s new Islamic administration was regarded in Baghdad as an irrational, existential threat to the Ba’ath government, especially because the Ba’ath party, having a secular nature, discriminated and posed a threat to the Shia movement in Iraq, whose clerics were Iran’s allies within Iraq and whom Khomeini saw as oppressed.[25] Some scholars have argued that Iranian-backed attacks and cross-border raids on Iraqi territory compelled Iraq to launch a preemptive invasion.[32]

However, Iraq’s regime was very politically secure, and in little danger of being overthrown by alleged plots of revolution-wracked Iran.[17] According to some sources, Khomeini’s hostility towards Saddam was actually milder than his Arab neighbors hostility towards Saddam.[33] Saddam’s primary interest in war stemmed from his desire to right the supposed “wrong” of the Algiers Agreement, in addition to finally achieving his desire of annexing Khuzestan and becoming the regional superpower.[17] Saddam’s goal was to replace Egypt as the “leader of the Arab world” and to achieve hegemony over the Persian Gulf.[34] He saw Iran’s increased weakness due to revolution, sanctions, and international isolation.[27] Saddam had heavily invested in Iraq’s military since his defeat against Iran in 1975, buying large amounts of weapons from the Soviet Union and France. By 1980, Iraq possessed 200,000 soldiers, 2,000 tanks and 450 aircraft.[4]:1 Watching the powerful Iranian army that frustrated him in 1974–1975 disintegrate, he saw an opportunity to attack, using the threat of Islamic Revolution as a pretext.[4][35]

Read all about that war at the link below, which also has a nice picture of Rumsfeld and Hussein warmly greeting one another.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War

It would appear that once the relationship disintegrated between America and Iraq leading to two wars in two subsequent decades, the Iraq’s chemical weapons were stored across the border in Syria so that UN inspectors would not discover them leading up to the war with Iraq during 2003.  America knew Iraq had the weapons because they allegedly supplied them, even if they couldn’t find them.  That was because Hussein’s buddy Assad was storing them in Syria.

But years later after America had finally removed Hussein from control of Iraq, the modern progressives went to work on Assad.  This is how John Kerry as a senator was seen dinning with Assad as their wives gathered to discuss all the fine shopping options in Syria.    A photo is going viral (GO AHEAD, CLICK ON THE LINK) showing the Kerrys and the Assads enjoying quite the intimate dinner in 2009.

Kerry was leading a delegation to Syria to discuss peace in the region at the time. According to French news agency AFP, Assad told Kerry during that visit that America needed a “proper understanding” of issues Syria faces.

Kerry has met with Assad on numerous occasions and once lauded Assad in 2011 as being a “very generous” man, according to the Weekly Standard.

“Well, I personally believe that — I mean, this is my belief, okay?” Kerry said. “But President Assad has been very generous with me in terms of the discussions we have had. And when I last went to — the last several trips to Syria — I asked President Assad to do certain things to build the relationship with the United States and sort of show the good faith that

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/08/28/john-kerry-wasnt-always-so-harsh-to-syrian-president-assad/

Now that all the progressive manipulation in the Middle East region has come to fruition it is time to cash in on the years of investment and wash everyone’s hands of the evidence.  That is the cause of most conflicts between nations, when governments have to clean up their mistakes from the past.  War is the great eraser which wipes away the sins of history—the manipulation of progressives in a region designed to advance their agenda.

The current situation in America is that Obama has a trail of scandals behind him and is falling in the polls.  The Republicans are terrified of getting stuck in a budget battle in September, so all the statists in the American government need something to avoid the justice seeking their careers.  War is the great unifier which often brings together members of all political parties under a common flag.  After all, that is the mantra of the Skull and Bones Society.  Military action of any kind is an attempt by the current government in America to erase years of mistakes they have made following interests that do not reflect The Constitution.  I do not trust the American government to do the right thing, so I certainly don’t trust them to spend lives and limb to erase their errors at a cost I provide with tax money.

I’m all for providing humanitarian aid, but the poor people of Syria are only a small group of people in the grand scheme of the world where millions upon millions of people suffer under governments not advocating capitalism.  Military engagements to help rebels who are built by terrorists to help former friends of Saddam Hussein is a no win situation that will not bring about justice, but only serve to allow the current government in America full of statists, progressives, and open socialists to cover the sins of their mismanagement of the Middle East region.  So I do not support military engagement in Syria.  If the U.N. wants to see justice there, let them use their own troops not supported by America do so, and see how far that goes.  I am not open to allowing the United Nations to believe they have authority over Syria by dragging America into a war so that they can take the credit for justice at our expense.  Syria is a mistake and will only serve to allow the bad guys to hide just a little while longer, and many of those bad guys, are in the American government.  They cannot be trusted to do the right things…………because if they could be, there wouldn’t be chemical weapons in Syria to begin with.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

‘The Lone Ranger’ Movie Review: A wonderful film that celebrates the individual character of America

???????????????With all the lead up to the movie being so intense here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom my lack of a review for The Lone Ranger was simply due to the fact that I was on vacation with my family when the film was released and there wasn’t time to physically go see the movie.  On two occasions while I was vacationing in Florida I intended to take my family to see The Lone Ranger, once at Downtown Disney, but had to withdrawal because the day was already overbooked, and then again at Merritt Square Mall which was down the road from our Atlantic Coast condo.  But there, getting everyone together to see the movie on a busy schedule while also coming and going from Disney World was nearly impossible, so I delayed my viewing until we were able to return home in Ohio.

But I did read the reviews that were coming in from our sea-side balcony which were actually hostile to The Lone Ranger which gave me great suspicion.  When I write about a movie with grand enthusiasm the reason is usually more than the film just being good, but because I see the struggle of the film makers to overcome the real Ellsworth Tooheys of the media who were trained by statist oriented education practices to recognize a threat to their social fabric which The Lone Ranger represents, and to assassinate such creative endeavors before they see the light of day.  I have spoken at great length about this very thing occurring with Christopher Nolan from The Dark Knight trilogy where critics attacked Nolan for his obvious warnings about an overly altruistic society.  Critics blasted Dark Knight Rises once they realized that the film was a not very concealed warning about communism in society after building up the social anticipation from the previous two films without such obvious proclamations.  Nolan saved his message for the final film, which made a billion dollars at the box office in spite of the terrible reviews the film received.  ???????????????With The Lone Ranger I expected to see even after the extremely negative reviews, a movie from Disney that was just good ol’ fashion fun—I did not expect yet another film with very heavy opinions against the government position of collectivism over the traditional rugged individualism that built America from the start.  Coming from the Disney Studios I expected a more disguised effort, especially with Johnny Depp staring as Tonto, and sharing a producing credit.  But if the nation is divided equally down the middle with Tea Party type Americans on one side, and welfare collecting altruists on the other, Disney usually makes films that all types of people will enjoy.  This is good for their box office numbers, but runs counter to the type of messages that Walt Disney himself believed who actually testified before a congressional committee against communism during the height of the McCarthy Hearings.  But this Lone Ranger was made by Disney to show favor toward the former of those demographic groups and not the later.???????????????

When The Lone Ranger is introduced as a young lawyer traveling from the East Coast by train the first bits of dialogue which come from Armie Hammer who was confronted by a religious group advocating Bible studies, was to hold up his copy of John Locke’s The Second Treatise of Government and declare, “This is my Bible.”  Upon that startling declaration I immediately knew why the film reviews were so terrible as The Lone Ranger was in love with America, and was making no mistake about it.  The film was setting out to attack many misconceptions about events which took place during a period of almost perfect capitalism in The United States, during the late 1800s.  ???????????????The Second Treatise of Government was one of the foundation books which people like Thomas Jefferson used to help shape the argument about the kind of country that America would be.  Modern Americans who regularly attend Tea Party events know that John Locke is one of the philosophers who opened the door to the way of thinking that distinctly became freedom loving.  To altruists, this is a major social danger as any message that exhibits freedom as one of the highest human endeavors also seeks to be free from social stupidity, the self-determined poor (lazy people), and the malcontents of civilization.  Social progressives have desired for years to shape American thought into reflecting European sentiment of sacrifice, shared suffering, and a focus on the “greater good” while steering the educated masses away from a personal love of individual freedom.  ???????????????Opening the film with a direct node to John Locke was a bold declaration that I was surprised made it past the Disney executives screening the film.  It’s possible that some of them did not know what the book meant to American foundation, but it is unlikely to have slipped by so many eyes without anybody knowing, especially Johnny Depp, who has been known to show up to film screenings showing his open support of Che Guevara.  I thought the John Locke reference was quite extraordinary but the references did not end there so I know that it was not an accident.

The film continued on as a fantastic western that was often a cross between the old Sergio Leone westerns composed musically by Ennio Morricone and the hysterical romp through the old west that was touched on by Back to the Future III.   The movie was very funny at times as Johnny Depp’s Tonto was brilliantly eccentric.  The film was wonderfully photographed, evenly paced, and was very passionate about its subject matter.  ???????????????It was an unapologetic western that might have been an early episode of the TV show Davy Crockett, only with Industrial Light and Magic doing some spectacular visual effects.  The stunts were ambitious, and the scope of the project was mammoth.  It was the largest scale western I think has ever been attempted.  But The Lone Ranger himself does not drink, does not curse, does not use tobacco (he refused when offered), he does not want to kill people, and is a naively good guy from the beginning to the end of the film.  The only character arch that John Reid embarked on evolving from the beginning to the end was in hardening up from a naive lawyer to a man who isn’t afraid to pull the trigger on a bad guy by the end of the film.  Reid never had a moment of weakness in the film where he got drunk, caved into the seductions of a woman, or lost his moral compass.  He was firmly focused on justice from the beginning of the film till the very end.???????????????

The bad guy in the film however was Cole played brilliantly by Tom Wilkinson.  I suspect that many of the reviewers who wrote such bad things about The Lone Ranger as a movie saw themselves as the evil character Cole, who spoke often very flowery about the need for “social sacrifice,” the “greater good,” and destroying entire groups of people if they stood in his way of vision for progress.  The film showed the Indian rebellions with extraordinary glory which was much more epic than Dances with Wolves ever managed, and even captured how the United States cavalry found itself caught in an uncompromising position of picking sides.  It was a complicated series of events that were manipulated by the villain Cole who appeared to be a good guy though 2/3rds of the movie.

By the time The Lone Ranger had competed his hero journey and arrived with his horse Silver to save the day at the end of the film with his six guns in his hands, a bullwhip on his hip and his uncompromising white hat running across the rooftops of the town on a horse to jump onto a moving train all to the William Tell Overture I thought I had died and gone to heaven.  For me that scene was the best moment of movie magic I have experienced since I was 12 years old and Indiana Jones ran his horse down a hillside to jump onto a moving truck to save the Ark of the Covenant from the evil Nazis.??????????????? There was pure magic in The Lone Ranger which was none stop for the last half hour of the film.  It helped that I went to the movie as a Lone Ranger fan as I think I have seen every bit of film ever produced about the Lone Ranger, but nobody makes movies like The Lone Ranger any more.  The last real attempt was the Indiana Jones films which I constantly thought about during the film. Ironically, Indiana Jones was modeled after the old Lone Ranger Republic Serials, so the ending to The Lone Ranger was a tribute to the history of film that took action to the next level.  The Lone Ranger was an instant favorite of mine that will go on my top twenty list.???????????????

But what was different about this Lone Ranger as opposed to other renditions was that Tonto was extraordinarily good.  Johnny Depp created one of the best characters of his career with Tonto and I found the scenes that took place in 1933 as the old Tonto was telling The Lone Ranger story to a little boy to be emotionally captivating.  These scenes were simply Johnny Depp at his absolute finest as an actor.  Tonto was a social outcast to his tribe that was living life with one firm foot planted into the spirit world and saw reality all too clearly giving the impression that he was insane through most of the film.  But he wasn’t, and it was obvious by the end of the film that Tonto as an extremely old man was deeply committed to the actual reality of justice that is hidden to most of the world, portraying a Yoda quality from The Empire Strikes Back that was captivating as a performance all by itself.

The only regret that I have about the movie is that I feel like it was made for people like me in mind, traditional Americans who love westerns, and characters who are uncompromisingly good.  It will not make a billion dollars at the box office like Iron Man and the last Pirates of the Caribbean film.  ???????????????It will be lucky to recover its $215 million dollar budget, which is unheard of for a western.  Only a company like Disney could have made a film like this, which was risky, so it is unlikely that Armie Hammer will have the chance to reprise his Lone Ranger role in the way that Robert Downey Jr has for Iron Man, and make future films.  The film by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Gore Verbinski using music by Hans Zimmer pulled out all the stops to make a great film under the penmanship of Ted Elliott, Justin Haythe, and Terry Rossio. ??????????????? Everyone involved with The Lone Ranger is among the best in their fields of endeavor, and it is a shame that the magic will probably never be seen again, because the box office will prevent it.  The Lone Ranger is one of those films that will percolate in America culture for a long time.  It will not have a big pop at the box office, but will be watched and loved for many years in a quiet way as viewers find it wonderfully good, but unsure why they like it so much while critics and industry professionals declare that it is such a bad film.  It is not the film that is bad for progressive types, but the message. ??????????????? Most people seeing The Lone Ranger cannot identify with the hero.  But they will identify with the villain, and that tends to make people angry.  Angry people do not throw down nearly a hundred dollars to see The Lone Ranger, which is what it cost me by the time we bought tickets and snacks, a rarity for us as a family.  I spent extra money at the theater knowing that a majority of the movie goers were not spending money on The Lone Ranger, so we broke our rule and bought the overpriced popcorn and drinks anyway, to support the film, and theater showing it.

Those critics missed the points and represent most opinions……………

Disney can roll the dice on movies like The Lone Ranger because they have so many other profitable revenue streams, which is just another benefit of capitalism.  I think the film will make its money back in the worldwide market so Disney won’t lose its money and Johnny Depp won’t lose face from his production credit.  Jerry Bruckheimer will continue to have successful films, including Pirates of the Caribbean 5 which is coming up in 2015.  But this will unfortunately be the last ride of this particular Lone Ranger, and that is unfortunate.  But if not for Disney, it would have never happened to begin with.  And because it did, I am very grateful.

Rich Hoffman

“Justice Comes with the Crack of a Whip!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

A New Living Legend: Thoughts from a 2013 Fourth of July

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The cute picture of the little boy shown is of my grandson.  That photo means more to me than just a sentimental moment of time captured by a gifted photographer at 9 months of age.  Within that picture there were many contributors to the photograph, my daughter of course made the little boy with her husband, my wife made the white blanket by hand, and my other daughter took the picture in the back yard of the home that she owns with her husband.  Virtually everyone in my immediate family played a part in that photograph.  My imprint of course is that I put the gift of adventure in all those individuals, which is represented by the stack of books off to the side.  That is what families are supposed to do and be for each other as the benefactors are little children like my grandson dressed in his little hat awaiting the tools of cognition to be put before his mind so that he too can live a life of adventure, discovering for himself all the potentialities that come from breathing air, and living life.

As another 4th of July came and went, I thought about my little grandson.  When people wonder why I do some of the things I do, the first answer is because I want to.  I enjoy fighting; debating, and philosophizing—pretty much in that order.  But there is always a sub-plot in the back of my mind which drives me with purpose.  When I was raising my children, it was fighting to make sure they tasted enough freedom and independent thought that they could grow up and live good lives.  I have been successful in that.  Now, it is the generation that comes after which I focus upon.

I have been an inspiration to many young people for many, many years.  I still associate with many of those grown adults who looked as children toward someone to teach them how to be good people, how to face their fears, and live righteously.  I have always offered myself in that role, even when I too was younger than they were.  But there comes a benefit in living, surviving, and arriving at a time when not only you think you know more than everybody else, but you are sure of it.  You know it because the reality around you has proven it time and time again.  You don’t realize it because the intention is to be haughty, arrogant, or considered a God among men, but you just are because nobody else is trying.

When I look at my grandson in that picture there is hope written all over his face.  He is the sum of many people who love him deeply.  As he gets older those character traits will grow more pronounced.  His mind will hunger for knowledge and he is lucky that there will be a lot of people to help fill it.  In particular, I have been already working with him in regard to bullwhip practice.  My daughters captured some of that action in the same photo session, where my grandson was playing around with the custom-made whips that were constructed just for him by my whip making friend David Crain.  I have been letting him watch the whip roll out so he can study the movement and memorize it for later, when he too learns to use them the way I do.

Every child is born with the opportunity to become anything.  Even children who are not genetically gifted or otherwise healthy have more potential in their minds than most living adults.  For them their stories are not yet written and it makes me sad to see so many young children who don’t have adults to pour thoughts into their minds, to give them the ability to think on their own as young adults, and finally as grown adults.  Most children the age of my grandson are doomed to a life of failure not because they lack any ability, but because they lack people in their lives that can help them develop into fully realized human beings.

My grandson will not have to worry about that. He has so many people in his life with very interesting traits of their own, that he has no choice but to pick up on those unique attributes while he forms his own character which is already evident.  Looking at him it reminds me of what the 4th of July is all about.  It’s why we fight to keep our country free so that little boys like my grandson can have the right to think and develop freely on their own, to bring their own unique gifts to the world.  Someday, my grandson might decide that the bullwhip is not for him, but he will make that choice on his own, after he has had exposure to it and filled his mind with the value it brings to him through practice, and a bond with me, his grandmother, his aunt and uncle, and his mom and dad.

The fight for freedom is more than just a token message created by the Tea Party movement to hijack elected offices and become tomorrow’s tyrants through the desk of a bureaucrat.  For me it is sincere, I believe in the things I say here with every cell in my body and beat of my heart.  I believe in it for myself, and the joy it brings me in seeing the lights of freedom igniting in another human being, like the innocent eyes of my grandson, as it was captured so eloquently in the photograph my daughter took.  I will teach his young mind in a way that was only available to my own daughters, but with the self-assuredness of having experience, to be a legend among mankind.  When most people say they want their children and grandchildren to grow up to be lawyers, doctors, or God forbid—politicians, I frown at all those types of jobs.  All of them are less than what I want for my grandson.  I want for him to be a living legend, a character of such charisma, determination, and moral aptitude that there has never been another like him.  Such a goal is a lofty one, but it’s what I will contribute to his mind with all our future time together.  I can see the sparkle in his eye already, and soon, he will begin to take the form of a character unlike the world has ever seen.

And it will come from individuals like my daughter—his mother and her vast creativity, his aunt—my other daughter and her photographic genius and forward thinking vision, my two son-in-laws, one a former MMA fighter, the other a bullwhip champion in his own right, and my wife who reads hundreds of books a year, makes blankets for every member of our extended family, and is willing to spend countless hours on the floor playing with children.  Then of course there are my contributions–in a few years I’ll have him jumping through walls of fire, cracking whips faster than lightning, crawling through caves that a snake couldn’t fit through and facing life with a fearlessness that every young man dreams of.  Ladies and gentlemen viewing that picture—you are seeing a future legend that will know an unlimited life free of any shackles created by deficient human minds.

As I watched the fireworks on the 4th of July in 2013, that is what I thought of.  And I will venture to make it so.

Rich Hoffman

“Justice Comes With The Crack of a Whip’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com