Tag: western arts

The Best Couple of Days of My Life: Galaxy’s Edge was a true masterpiece and marvel of achievement toward creativity

Anybody who knows me, knows that the way to my heart is through creativity, anything that shows an effort at outside the box creativity is the way to win me over to any effort. This applies to food, buildings, works of art, even relationships. I judge just about everything on the creative level of input from the participants, and if they don’t show an effort at creativity, I quickly disregard whatever it is as useless. I’m largely a Star Wars fan because the film franchise, the toys, the merchandise in general have always been very creative, and its fun to visit anything Star Wars as to offer from a creative standpoint. I always find that the reality of Star Wars is better than the reality of our present society because in Star Wars they are asking creatively how things could be instead of crying about how things are. If I had to sum up my love of Star Wars in one sentence, that would be it. So with all that context I visited finally Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Hollywood Studios and I have to say with great enthusiasm that it was a dream come true. I have to thank the Disney Imagineers and Bob Iger’s vision to turn them loose on this $1 billion dedication to creativity and everything that Star Wars could be, so that I could walk around and see, touch, taste and experience a Star Wars reality that I really thought would never be possible, even with my considerable talents at creativity being what they are.

I found my visits this past week to Galaxy’s Edge mind bending, and simply jaw dropping. I’ve traveled around the world and experienced many cultures. Nothing comes close to what I experienced at Galaxy’s Edge. Even though it is all a fictional reality, I found it quite clear that the Imagineers of Disney had not just recreated a Star Wars experience for fans of the films and books, but had created a better reality for which the stories of Star Wars had always been endeavoring to create in the minds of their fans. Only now it was real, you could see it, touch it, and taste it. The perfect symphonic elements of good storytelling I don’t think have ever been done this well anywhere in the world, ever.

I remember when The Lion King was all the rage on Broadway and how the use of the puppet props to recreate the story of the animated movie The Lion King touched people in what many thought was a sophisticated way. It was considered high art by even the most hardened social critics. Walking into this Galaxy’s Edge land dedicated to Star Wars with all the great sounds and music by John Williams genius work was not just watching a concert where the actors and musicians were on stage performing for you, but that you were now part of the story and the action was happening to you. It was an entirely new way to present a high art concept using a popular film franchise as the launching point. Everywhere I looked was an obvious, “this is how it could be” message by Disney Imagineers. The ever important asking of the question, “what if?”

To start by asking a question, “what if the values of cowboy cinema and Saturday morning serials could be met to the needs of the next generation of space traveler” was the question George Lucas asked years ago before using Joseph Campbell’s studies on mythology to launch the Star Wars film franchise. Then to see it evolve into a full three dimensional reality with the promise of more, and more for me was the most ambitious attempt ever conducted at such an audacious task, the realization of a fantasy into a known reality even on such a level as Star Wars is known for. This was the highest form of storytelling that I have ever seen in any format by any level of content. It was sophisticated, honest, and hopeful in inspiring people to ask those next level questions about our own reality. If you can have Star Wars in Disney World, then why not everywhere, and on any planet? As I walked around Galaxy’s Edge I thought of Elon Musk and what designs his engineers at Space X might be inspired to upon visiting this place and how the Mars expeditions of the future might take shape directly inspired by these constructs. In all my years of reading about mythology, comparative religion and science fiction in general, nobody had ever come close to doing anything remotely close to what Disney had done at Galaxy’s Edge. When they said this was the most ambitious project they had ever attempted, they weren’t kidding.

I couldn’t get enough of that place. It was the most comfortable I can remember ever feeling anywhere at any point in my life. When I was a kid I had a very creative place in my parents basement that was dedicated to Star Wars. I built lots of models and landscapes dedicated to the old Kenner toys and I enjoyed that until about age 13 when my parents were concerned that I’d rather spend time there than in dating and socializing. They took it down while I was at school one day and let me know that they were going to fix up the basement and were going to move me down there so I could have my own room through my teenage years. I never really got over that experience, I was so angry about it that I carried it around for years. Not that I could blame them, they thought they were doing the right thing. But for my kind of mind, it was the worst thing they could have done. I just wanted to have a creative space for my mind and when they took that away, there wasn’t a replacement so I internalized everything because there was no other choice.

And even when you grow up, it doesn’t get any easier. People want pieces of you every hour of every day, and if you are a good person, you do all you can to help them out with their problems. For me, the more people who come into your life the harder it is to find time to think, which is what I like doing the most. So as ridiculous as it sounds, I have been craving that creative space for myself all these years since then to now, but life just doesn’t give it to you. You either get it as a kid or never again because kids don’t yet have the responsibility of life. So they get free time to think about things, and when life came to interrupt my creative solitude, I did the best I could with it, but nothing life offered was ever as satisfying as that creative space I had in my parent’s basement when I was 9 to 13 years old. Walking through Galaxy’s Edge it was obvious that my sentiments were not alone to me, but that many of the people who had built the place, under the power of Disney’s financial abilities, had similar experiences as me, and this was a love letter from them to the efforts of creativity. It was a place I had been thinking of building since I was a little kid and seeing it and being there was very special.

I can’t say enough good things about it. I’m so glad to have the opportunity to visit the place. It was and will likely remain one of the best couple of days of my life.

Rich Hoffman

The Mandalorian: One great show on Disney+

So the Mandalorian television show for Star Wars showing on Disney+ continues to impress me and make me very happy to have the new streaming service option as part of a massive collection of entertainment options. At this point there have been five episodes and its quite clear that the creators understand what Star Wars is all about, even if critics are still mystified as to the magic. Most people love the show, many of them like it. I have yet to hear from people who hate it. Critics in the industry continue to measure “greatness” by the amount of social justice in any entertainment product, and Star Wars has never been about that. When Disney has tried to make social justice part of the experience, Star Wars fails. And that is not the case with The Mandalorian. I wouldn’t say that Episode 5 was my favorite so far, but I do love the title, “The Gunslinger.”

It was fun to travel back to Mos Eisley spaceport on Tatooine from the original Star Wars movie and see the cantina, the Dewbacks, and the docking bays that originally started us all on this massive journey. This particular episode reminded me again of many of the great westerns that I grew up loving, specifically in this case, The Unforgiven with the stupid young kid playing off the much more experienced gunfighter. Critics keep providing a disclaimer that this series is Saturday morning cartoon material, and more specifically, Saturday morning matinee material which George Lucas grew up on. OK, so what? That’s what makes this kind of entertainment so special. That’s how Star Wars was born to begin with, so its not surprising that the creators are trying to get back to the roots of what makes the brand so special. Sometimes its good to tell a story without trying to change a public narrative, but one that reflects the one we have. Disney has certainly listened to the fans even if the industry is still trying to scratch their heads at why returning back to Mos Eisley was so much fun for fans.

I think its great that female directors are working on The Mandalorian. I thought Bryce Dallas Howard did a great job with Episode 4, brilliant even. It doesn’t matter to me if the director is a man or a woman, what matters is if the content is good, and with this show, it is. So long as nobody tries to turn the show into something that its not, The Mandalorian will continue to be a hit. I found myself looking forward to this latest episode all week and its been a very long time since I’ve had that experience, especially these days with all the on demand content that you can binge watch. Having a show that is this much fun to look forward to after a long hard work week is a wonderful thing to have, and I must thank Disney+ for giving it to us.

What is unexpected by me at this point in the show’s run is the popularity of Baby Yoda which is all anybody who is anyone is talking about. The little creature from The Mandalorian is taking over the internet and people are falling all over themselves for a chance to get the first merchandise that goes on sale. The Mandalorian is a cool show, so it’s a bit odd that such a cute character that so many people love has come out of it is the surprise. At this point in the season I wouldn’t have guessed that so many people would be talking about it. I would say the character is so popular that if we put Baby Yoda on the ballot for the next presidential election, that he’d win. That is the state of our political life these days, and maybe that’s not a bad thing.

The value of something from a scientific perspective is whether or not its fun. In a society of thinking human beings, we all need a little fun in our lives, and anything that gives that to us is a tremendous benefit. Having fun gives us the ability to set perspective and manage stress, so in that regard, The Mandalorian is better than just a show, it’s a wonderful stress management tool full of big ideas as this gunfighter/bounty hunter travels around a galaxy in a cool starship and interacts with all kinds of challenges without getting too emotional. That makes these shows fun and a great relief from the mundane outside world that is addicted to problems and stagnant thinking. So far, The Mandalorian never seems too far from a solution no matter how great the problem has been. In this Episode 5 The Mandalorian gets into a dogfight in space with someone trying to collect a bounty on him, and his ship is knocked out stranding him. He doesn’t panic and cry to his mom, he just calmly fixes his ship and gets going again. Traditionally, that is what the Saturday morning serials did for young people, show them how to deal with tragedy with a kind of bravado that made all their normal problems seem small, and in that way, solutions were easy to find.

Everyone in entertainment could take a lessen from The Mandalorian. Nobody says that a good show must have a huge budget and a bunch of cry baby characters to be good. Just giving the audience what they are looking for is the most important thing. Nothing about The Mandalorian is trying to be the next critically acclaimed show, it’s just having fun being what it is and its kind of strange to find that so refreshing because when I was growing up, most everything that was produced had that kind of whimsical quality. Most of the time, the best things are the things that critics don’t like, because many of them have some social agenda they are trying to steer creative people to, such as social justice concerns that are here today and gone tomorrow as a political priority. The things that matter most to people are things that last no matter how politics are aligned.

If Disney keeps up this kind of production I will be firmly in their camp. I have been skeptical about them as a company as they have been way to political for me, even as recently as Frozen II. I am very much a lover of traditional Walt Disney productions, and this Mandalorian title and the direction of Star Wars recently gives me hope that we can get back to that kind of story telling and cultural reverence. But I’m bound to like anything that has the title, “The Gunslinger.” Kids need a lot more entertainment like that, the values extend deep into our culture not just into our past, but for our future. But heck with the kids, I need more of this, and apparently so do many other fans of the show. Baby Yoda is cute, and it makes the show better. However, what makes the show good is that its fun, and its not afraid to take some chances which is why I look forward to it all week long, and watch it at my first available moment every Friday.

Rich Hoffman

Lisa Page, the Latte Sipping Prostitute: Whores come in all types, even in the FBI

I’ve had a lot of them, but one of the best phrases I’ve ever come up with to describe a certain sector of the voting population is that of the infamous Latte Sipping Prostitute. It’s a kind of woman who uses her sexuality to control men toward political measures to satisfy their instinctual needs at motherhood and all the neurosis of a panic driven imbecile and the men go along with these antics because they don’t want to make these women unhappy denying them sex when desired. Where a bar whore or a street walker might sell sex for dope, or even a place to stay for the night, the latte sipping prostitute does much the same for reasons just as malicious, only society doesn’t have a proper measure, so the antics are often overlooked, at least until I came up with that term several years ago to describe school levy supporters. The term could apply to just about any socialite, and certainly tells a proper story about those kinds of women who otherwise are looked at falsely as stewards of good conduct. As a white man, I’m not supposed to have such opinions, yet I do, and they are entirely accurate ways to portray the kind of political element that we encounter often, especially when it comes to the FBI lawyer Lisa Page who was sleeping with the FBI investigator Peter Strzok at the highest levels of the case against Hillary Clinton and would eventually seek through pillow talk and texts the overthrow of an American election. No small matter.

And as Trump mocked the two lovers at a recent rally, he had a right. The two FBI agents abused their power and were driven to crimes and rightly brought to ruin. But not because of some ethical conduct on behalf of the FBI, who tried to cover up the affair and their political activism, but because Strzok’s wife found the text messages and let them out to the public. Page was married, so was Strzok and when the wife approached Page, she behaved mystified that the jealous woman had misunderstood the nature of their affair. After all, what’s a few sleepovers at a local hotel? Just sex, not necessarily an affair. That was after all how Lisa Page reacted before the world knew her name and all the intimate details of her relationship with an FBI lover. And after many months more of embarrassing nightly reminders of that mistake, and surely a husband of her own very jealous, the pressure is getting to her and she wants it to stop.

Yet she never should have played the game. She along with her boyfriend tried to overturn an election, and she used sex to manipulate an FBI agent to act against his better judgment. Sure, its his fault to fall for it, but she was certainly acting as a latte sipping prostitute as I have defined it in previous cases. It may not be a politically correct term, but it is an accurate one. People like her do this kind of thing all the time. Yet when they get caught, they attempt to hide behind society’s lack of definitions for this activity. She may regret what she had done now, it certainly wasn’t a smart career move. However she did play it and now the consequences are hard to deal with which should be expected.

To call these types of people a whore is what is debated, of course by other latte sipping prostitutes who want to look in the mirror and think of themselves as good people and outstanding community members. Just as Lisa Page, according to her own text messages to her lover was perplexed as to why Peter’s wife would think they were having an affair just because they were sleeping with one another is equivalent to a bar whore not thinking of the sex they sell as a relationship but as a product. Most people in their lives are selling something. My measure for the authenticity of it or not can be determined by the fine work of Mihaly Csikszentmilhalyi’s great book Flow. If what you are doing for a living is purely for the exchange of money or some power connected to it, then to some degree or another you are no different than a prostitute selling sex for money, or in doing as Lisa Page was attempting, to use sex to manipulate an FBI agent into overthrowing an American election. All the behavior is the same. Going back to the origins of the latte sipping prostitute title I have given so many, such people use sex and their power of entry to it to sway their spouses into supporting school levies and other tax measures, so the behavior is no different and is just another level of prostituting themselves to gain something not quite authentic.

Even a whore wants to think of their profession as something beneficial even going to such measures of thinking that they help relationships where bed rituals are suffering. Anybody can justify anything, and clearly that was what Lisa Page was in the business of doing at the level of the FBI. The scary thing about it is that she obviously was not alone but was simply one who was caught due to the large visibility at the top of American politics with eyes on the situation where it took a jealous wife to unleash the evidence. Without question, there are many more latte sipping prostitutes functioning in the open within what we call the Beltway swamp, and they are dangerous to our American republic.

What a person chooses to do with their ethical standards is not the business of the American people until they try to use their bodies and female resources to alter laws, taxation, or elections. At that point, they are a detriment to our entire social order and they deserve derogatory terms as a reference to their illicit services. What they don’t deserve is respect even if they wear feathers, furs, or expensive jewelry to disguise their function. A whore is a whore whether they sell their bodies in a bar, on a street, or in bedrooms of loveless marriages for the purposes of manipulating their spouses toward political means. Its all whoring.

Men whore too, they sell themselves for stupid things all the time for much the same reasons that we associate with whores. They can be latte sipping prostitutes as well. I can think of a long list of beta men who fit that category perfectly. And in many ways Lisa Page’s boyfriend in the FBI was a whore of a different kind. He was sucking up to his superiors to play the political assassin for a group of swamp creature radicals who wanted to do anything to stop Trump from becoming president. If he could do it and get a little on the side by a swamp whore sipping lattes instead of drunken ale, that was even better. But if not her, a trip down K-Street would do, and often does for many of those types. That is the truth of the matter and its important that we don’t confuse their actions with the merit of a civilized society. They are all prostitutes, but their vices come in all shapes and sizes but their worth is all the same.

Rich Hoffman

The False Nature of Teams: Reflections on the Ohio State win over Michigan

I saw some of the most bizarre behavior during the Ohio State football game at Michigan in Ann Arbor over the weekend that its worth some observational notes. I don’t watch much college football all though I enjoy the ambiance of all fall football. The details are often too boring. The students are not yet perfected to the level of the pros and I don’t enjoy watching them. I think colleges hold back people; it doesn’t enhance them. They are good for educating people into procedures and to be good employees, but not so good in turning out unusual thinkers willing to push the limits and during the game my concerns were more than confirmed. If the goal is to find one’s place into some pecking order of procedural thinking, colleges do what people spend their money on. But they do not make leaders—I find that colleges openly lie about this objective and they charge way too much money for it, yet they convince people to pay it due to these sports programs.

Watching the Michigan side, complete with Tom Brady providing commentary in favor of the “Blue” of his former school there were these bizarre statements about teamwork, and that the team is greater than any individual, any player, any coach, anything. This was astonishing to me because I hear that come out of the mouths of many people all through my professional life from the statehouses across the country to the intimate business meetings that happen hour by hour. People say these really dumb things and it makes you wonder where they get this information. Well, I know that the colleges have become in America excessive liberal factories trying to program political activism into their students and charging a lot of money for the opportunity. In trade, most companies, especially large ones agree to hire the kids from the colleges because secretly they just want nice employees who won’t rock the boat with new, breaking thoughts. They will just do what they are told and suppress any frustrations that might arise from the arrangement. But here, at the Ohio State game was lies about the arrangement, that no individual is more important than the team and that’s just not how the world works. The snake oil salesmen have obviously been hard at work in the broadcast booths of our nation’s college football games.

In the end the game was a blowout in favor of Ohio State winning 56-27. The point of the whole exercise was to make people who have attended these universities over the years, which is the point of all college sports programs, is to give those who have graduated, a continued value for their money spent. These days its like getting DLC content for a completed video game. It gives the participants a feeling of unity and a kind of family atmosphere in those massive 100,000 people stadiums where these games are played. But right after the game is done and everyone goes home, the specifics are forgotten and its off to the next thing. The whole experience is to unify people into the team concept of college sports and to coax them into continuing to spend money on the perceived results. For the amount of money that we are talking the whole scam is pretty pathetic.

So it went at the start of the game and during all this fluffy commentary about team work being so much greater than any individual, yet the results of the game was all about individuals being better than others, and the rest of the team sat on the sideline cheering them on along with the people in the stands. The terms, “we won” as was the common term used after the game, or “we lost this one,” were ludicrous. Ohio State had better individual players who picked up the team and took them to victory. In this particular game the quarterback and the running back were the two main positions where exceptional play took place, but most of the rest of the game was just a bunch of average people fulfilling their positions. Sure, the quarterback needs someone to throw the ball to, and the running back needs blockers—but in those positions, most anybody can play those roles, which is normal for the college experience. Most any graduate can be hired or replaced, and nobody would notice. But, the exceptional players J.K. Dobbins finding holes to run through or some of those deep, accurate passes from Justin Fields weren’t part of some team other than they needed to follow the instructions of the leaders in running the proper routes and getting open to make a play. The individual efforts were far more important than any collective message about unity.

Tom Brady’s comments in support of Michigan were bizarre as well. Let’s try an experiment, let’s take Tom Brady off the New England Patriots professional football team and see how many games they win. Or let’s take away their now famous coach. The lie that a team is what wins football games is told everywhere in modern culture, people buy it completely due to these kinds of recreation events justifying their comments, but reality is not being observed. The hard work that Tom Brady has always put into the game is why his teams have changed the players but they always continue to win. He is the stabilizing factor; the players come and go but the victories are the results of the many extra hours of hard work that Brady does to stay ahead of the competition. The teams under him get the ability to win a Super Bowl ring by sitting on the bench as opposed to playing for some other team where they might be expected as individuals to do more. But the truth is, they are irrelevant to the winning process, but Tom Brady is the key to a chance—and nobody else.

And it wasn’t Michigan who made Tom Brady who he is. They didn’t give him his natural talents. They gave him a chance to show it off but Brady didn’t come out of his big win over Ohio State a number one draft pick. He had to work his way up and work harder than everyone else, and still to this day he does that. That’s why he’s over 40 and still has a starting job in the NFL. Who else is going to be better than him? In the end, it comes down to the exceptional who carry the masses—always, in sports, in business, in politics—in everything. Everything. The colleges lie to justify their roles, and the masses buy the lie so that they can feel like they are part of a winning formula. But it always comes down to individual effort that leads teams to victory. Not the other way around. Everytime someone says something so stupid as the “team” is bigger than any one person you can always know that the person saying it has no idea how the world really works, and they are faking leadership. Because leadership is not about team victories, its about doing what leaders tell you and riding their coattails to success. And like I said, a good quarterback, running back, or business partner needs someone to throw the ball to. But wins and losses do not happen as a team, they happen as a result of leadership by individuals over those hungry to be led somewhere for an effort they couldn’t get any other way. That is a truth many aren’t prepared to contemplate, yet it’s the true essence of this ever-present reality.

Rich Hoffman

The Future of Government: Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s pace setting changes

A friend of mine gave me a nice book by Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum which I’ve had for a few weeks and browsed through with some enjoyment. Given the Thanksgiving break, I was able to set aside another 7 hours to complete the book and found it very enjoyable, especially with his views on government. Now in reading this with an open mind, I had to put his support of Palestine against Israel into perspective and also consider the large amount of drama that has been following one of the world’s richest men and the driver of Dubai’s leap into the future, especially in regard to his daughter, the missing princess. But great energy and intelligence are often criticized, and nobody ever fits into the square holes that society gives us as we are all circles, triangles and rectangles and usually don’t fit unless we beat them into place with a hammer.

I like Dubai very much and I especially like what they are doing in that region of the world with the Hyperloop and the efforts at skycars. It takes a person thinking like Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum to do big things like that. In the United States we do have a mind thinking like this in the Oval Office in President Trump. There is less democracy in Dubai, so it is far easier for a big personality like Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum to have his way and get things done. Often very wealthy people like this are hated by the lazy and stupid, so much of the smoke that comes from these types of people is scrutinized with more of a focus on pushing them into one of these square holes instead of understanding their true value to the context of the human story. With that said, Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s opinion on government is something worth considering as I share his sentiment.

I make it no debate; I hate government as it has been presented to me over the years. They are slow, unambitious and filled with people afraid of real performance. They get to work too late in the day and they leave way to early. Just a trip to the BMV is a miserable experience, the hours of operation is in the middle of the work day so you have to take time out of your schedule to get silly things like drivers license renewals completed which is an extremely low value add contribution to the day of people who are really doing things in life. Government in the United States especially is too expensive and does not serve customer interests nearly enough, especially for the cost. They are corrupted by liberal labor unions that push back against very basic requests and are generally a huge waste of time. I was happy to read in Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s book that he feels much the same way that I do about government and in the UAE he is pushing reforms with the following sentiments:

• The government of the future is open for service 24/7, all year round. The private sector remains open for business so why not the public sector?” We want our government to be just like an airline—available around the clock.

• The government of the future competes with and surpasses the private sector in service quality. We want our government to welcome customers more professionally than hotels; we want our government to manage processes better than banks.

• The government of the future is connected. Citizens should be able to complete any government transaction at any government service center. Integrated service centers will spare citizens long trips from one entity to another.

• The government of the future is available anywhere. We want to shift government services onto smartphones so that customers can file and follow up on transactions using mobile devices at their convenience.

• The government of the future is innovative and constantly able to generate ideas. In 2012 the UAE government was able to generate over 20,000 fresh ideas to simplify and improve its services. Our goal is to create an environment that encourages people to generate innovative ideas. Implement them and constantly measure their effectiveness. Innovation is the capital of the future.

• The government of the future is a smart government with integrated and efficient technical systems. A smart government is so much faster in completing various kinds of transactions.

Now, all that sounds very logical to me. It makes perfect sense. In the United States when I complain about taxes being too high it is because I have always my business hat on, which requires the kind of thinking that Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has set as targets for his own government in the UAE. And I am quite sure that they are working to make that a reality in the city of Dubai. Its important to realize that this is what the United States is competing with, its not Europe, or China or anyplace other than the very innovative thinking coming out of the UAE. I noticed this first actually while visiting Harrod’s in London and seeing on the top floor all the future plans for cities of the future in the UAE. London was no longer the cultural center of the universe, nor was New York, or Hong Kong, but rather it was Dubai and more specifically this way of thinking from Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

The forces at work in the United States that are keeping us from matching the ambitions of Dubai are what I would call domestic enemies because they are standing in the way of the kind of innovation that we need to be utilizing aggressively. Every time I hear some teacher’s union complaining about less kids, less work hours and more pay it makes me literally sick, because the rest of the world is starting to realize that people like Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum are shaping the future. And it should be the United States that everyone should be emulating. It also makes me very angry to see that our own government would rather fight to protect the status quo by attacking our own President Trump, who wants to think ahead of Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. But instead, they want to impeach him any way possible so that they can resist the need to change their behavior in government.

A healthy hatred of government if it proves to be a detriment to productivity and a happy life is good. We shouldn’t expect something to be bad just because its government and rationalize that we can’t do anything about it. Government works for the people, not the other way around and for too long governments around the world have grown complacent and more intrigued with their aristocratic status than in being known for what they accomplish. That isn’t acceptable to me and it was refreshing to hear that Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum doesn’t find it acceptable either, that some people in the world do get it. That is why it is good to read books, especially from cultures that are not native to your own, so that ideas can be generated, and understandings met. The media certainly wouldn’t report this information, I didn’t know much about Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum until I read his book except that he had family problems with one of his daughters. The media will report that, but not all these thoughts about government. And that is another huge part of this problem that we should all be angry about.

Rich Hoffman

Democrats Can’t Live up to what they’ve Created: Over 60 million people voted for Trump and they’ll do it again

I’m not the biggest Steve Bannon fan but he has been making the rounds giving good interviews and perspectives on the impeachment attempts by Democrats, which looked at philosophically, as opposed to just legally, has some all-encompassing elements of a future state America that is very good. But if I required honor and good conduct from everyone before I dealt with them or listened to their opinions, I would never speak with anybody. So, I watched Bannon’s interviews with interest without thinking much of the many dubious schemes he was involved in himself. A lot of people make mistakes, especially when they get into the forges of Mordor where evil whispers into their ears often, and Bannon was certainly one of them. Trump on the other hand is used to power and he isn’t the stereotype that many would make of a rich man from Bible stories of opulence and a love of gold and beautiful women. Trump has remarkably been able to repeal evil even as it has surrounded him and shown great judgment while under fire from many enemies, which is something new, and what Democrats didn’t count on as they over played their hand.

As I have been saying about the end of the Democratic Party, this impeachment attempt on their part is the evidence that continues to grow. If Trump had been a conventional politician with lots of skeletons in his closet, afraid of his own shadow, these methods might have worked as they did in the past. However, he is far from conventional, and that is precisely why over 60 million people voted for him and continue to support him even with all the dirty tricks the Democrats have tried to play over the last three years. What’s really bad for them about the whole impeachment attempt is that they have now opened up a level of judgement of an American president for which they will never be able to live up to. For what they are trying to impeach Trump for, Obama could have been convicted a million times over, for which their only defense was that he was a man of color, and that any criticism of Obama’s administration was racist. Well, that might have worked in 2012, but we’re in a whole new world now folks. The Democrats have shown too much of their play book and now they are exposed, and that is the cost of overplaying their hands. They won’t be able to withstand future Republicans who control the House and their cries for rebuke won’t be listened to by a sympathetic public. Democrats have ruined that relationship now, and likely forever, which is why I said they will lose their party soon.

There are so many things we could have impeached Obama on. Just the IRS case for which I got drug into where the government tax collecting agency went after Tea Party leaders with an obvious attempt at harassment. That isn’t a conspiracy theory, its known fact. Fast and Furious is another, so is Benghazi. There are so many actions taken by the Obama administration that are far worse than this Ukrainian phone call they are accusing Trump of that under the same considerations that Trump is being held to, the Republican House could have impeached Obama many, many times over. And in the future, due to what the Democrats have done to Trump, there is now an open invitation to consider everything impeachable. The Democrats have made it for themselves impossible to ever have a Democrat president again who could withstand the scrutiny of the office. Much has been destroyed regarding respect in politics that what will remain is a bloodbath that many of them won’t be able to stand.

Bannon is right about Trump being the CEO that America put in office to solve these many problems, which is why no matter what has been brought up, that support for Trump has only increased. It says a lot about America that more than 60 million people understood the problems well enough in government to pick Trump over the other offerings. And that is precisely the problem with Democrats, they don’t have anybody in their party with that kind of appeal. Nobody. Not even close, and now that they have extended themselves legally with this impeachment attempt against a person that 60 million people voted to put into office to fix the dysfunction, then those people were called a “cult” by those same people in government seeking to hold their jobs just a bit longer, they have pretty much signed their own death warrant as a party. This trial in the Senate is going to be bloody for them. Very bloody.

Without question the House Democrats were so short sighted that they wanted to put a black mark next to Trump’s record. They don’t care if it sticks in the Senate, they just want to hurt Trump in some way for bringing change to their swamp culture. The cost of that is of course exposure for the future as the same rules will be applied to them, for which they won’t survive. It was one thing to go after Obama for all his crimes during office where the other side could call it “mean-spirited.” It’s quite another when the next time is founded with the roots of precedence. Even when Trump was critical of the Obama birth certificate issue, which was founded in much harder facts than this Ukrainian thing is. Democrats paid it no mind at all and felt compelled to push back on Trump for even bringing it up calling all those who followed such thoughts, “birthers.” Yet now that they other side has felt the sting of an even flimsier case and witnessed how far Democrats would commit themselves to it, context is now in place for many worse battles in the future. We are truly in a new age, and that is not good news for Democrats in any regard.

Bannon has always had good thoughts about strategy, and he’s right about this impeachment case. It will backfire on Democrats. Power is a funny thing, everyone wants it, but few people can deal with it. The stories of mythology are filled with characters who failed when power was granted to them and they became tyrants. Democrats for all their statements about the powerful are among the worst. However, few have been able to handle power so well as Trump has over the years, especially now. No matter what political sides try to make of the law, nothing can change the fact that over half of America voted for Trump recognizing the need before 2016 took place. And after three years of the Trump presidency, America is far better off, meaning people are going to vote for him again in larger numbers. And Democrats have nothing to offer and now they have screwed up their own future with a precedence they can’t live up to. If there was ever a “checkmate” in politics, this would be it. So, it doesn’t take a genius to see it. It is good to see that after all the smoke has settled, people like Steve Bannon and Glenn Beck are finding themselves on the right side of history.

Rich Hoffman

Baby Yoda and the Mandalorian: Guilds, fraternities and organizations are no match for a good smuggler

Needless to say it, but I am very happy with The Mandalorian, the latest Star Wars show revealed on the new Disney+ streaming service. I think it’s the best show I’ve seen on television in quite a while, and I don’t just say that as a Star Wars fan. The first three episodes have completely captured pop culture with the revelation of the now famous baby Yoda and suddenly we have something very special on our hands that is bringing people together in a time where Democrats are trying to impeach President Trump so that they don’t have to run against him in 2020. Knowing how politically active the modern Disney Company is I was surprised that they even allowed for The Mandalorian to be made since the plot is essentially a “lone gunman” fighting his way for life after the events of Return of the Jedi and the fall of the Empire. There are lots of gunfighters and the way the episodes are filmed are very reminiscent of early Clint Eastwood westerns. But Disney more than anything is about making money, which they should be, and after the let downs of political tampering so far in the Kathy Kennedy era Star Wars shows, everyone seems to have learned their lesson and is making The Mandalorian in a way to make up all that to the fans. Needless to say, I’m a fan.

As all this is happening my wife and I are planning a trip to Disney World, its about time for me. I’ve always loved Disney because of their more traditional programming, such as Zorro and Davy Crockett which are both available on Disney+ and I have been watching them for the memories. Disney World and all those Florida theme parks are intended to be such optimistic places which a person like me feeds off of. But being the big corporate target that they are, not all management at Disney gets it and they do pander to Democrat and more dangerous progressive ideas way too often such as they had with Star Wars which I have covered here voluminously. Frozen II is out and doing good business, but it has several political messages that will be considered dated in the near future, especially in regard to gay and transvestite concerns and that’s a shame. So there is bad with the good and Disney as a company is trying to make money off everyone, so the Disney products are not traditionally safe and family friendly as we’d assume them to be, and I find that problematic. Frozen II was green lit a few years ago, before Trump was elected, so I can understand their mistakes, even though the box office has yet to reveal it to them. The Mandalorian however shows that at least Disney listens and is looking to make a course correction with Star Wars.

Disney as a company has always been about ideas and that is obvious in the theme parks. Their films and television shows generate sentiment, but it is the theme parks that drive the mythology home and make those ideas into something you can see and touch. I’ve always thought of their entertainment vision as bold and beautiful. I look at Liberty Square in Disney World as a temple of American reverence and it would not exist if not for the greater appeal of Disney as a company. To a point I’m willing to overlook political work like Frozen II or the lectures about global warming from a company that took a swamp in central Florida and completely reformed it for the benefit of amusement, because the end product is very good. In many ways The Mandalorian is the embodiment of the Disney Company itself and the metaphor has not been lost to me. At the start of the show the bounty hunter was well respected and wealthy. But along the way it has had to undergo some transformation that has inspired it to find the now famous baby Yoda and save it from the clutches of an evil Empire seeking to restore itself to power. To do so, The Mandalorian must turn against the Bounty Hunter Guild to do the right thing. Pretty good stuff.

As far as Star Wars mythology goes I had been liking The Mandalorian as a character when he was presented as the lone gunman type, but all this attachment to his Mandalorian culture is not something I admire. This “way” they keep talking about is not something I can relate to. But Star Wars has a lot of things for a lot of people and for me, the “smuggler” class still is far superior. They are not held to the rules of an organization the way these bounty hunters appear to be so I find their efforts far superior as a philosophy, and that is obviously understood by Disney as well as they have made their theme park attraction Galaxy’s Edge at Hollywood Studios a dedication to those types of people in the Star Wars storytelling experience. Even when the big organizations fail, such as the Empire did, or the First Order is attempting to restore, or the Rebellion succeeded but failed to properly organize a replacement government leaving the Resistance to attempt to stand up to the First Order, or the Mandalorians are trying to reestablish themselves in the wake of war, it is the smugglers and outlaws who manage to see the reality of such things due to their lack of investment into the social order of things, and that is very much a sentiment I can relate with.

There’s a lot going on and media and the things people enjoy coming from it is happening at a rapid pace. Political sentiments that were started in 2015 look like ancient history by 2020 so for a company like Disney trying to be all things to all people, its hard to pin down and I’ll give them a little room for that. By what has so far been seen of The Mandalorian Disney at least has shown that they aren’t so committed to Democrat talking points that they’ll penalize themselves as a profitable company. If Disney can continue to put out the kind of content that they are with The Mandalorian there is a bright future for Star Wars even if they have stumbled through much of this present decade. There is a lot of room to repair that relationship and they are off to a good start with baby Yoda and The Mandalorian.

More specifically I do not find The Mandalorian such an admirable character as he is more attached to his culture than I would like to see. Belonging to a guild, a fraternity, or club is a social security blanket that many people can’t see beyond, so I understand the reason its part of the story. I prefer the lone gunfighters who are also smugglers and don’t crave the company of others to make them feel a sense of belonging. But The Mandalorian is great in all other aspects and I look forward each week to the new episodes. It is certainly some of the best television I have seen in a number of years. And it looks like that is only going to increase.

Rich Hoffman

Stand Your Ground in Ohio: There is never a “duty to retreat,” the law is wrong

It tells you all you need to know about gun control, especially in states like Ohio where gun rights are very explicitly covered in its own Constitution, that all subsequent gun legislation has been designed to drive people toward more government central authority and not the individual rights guns protect. And that is certainly true of the liberal resistance, even by the current Republican governor of all forms of “stand your ground” laws that move through the legislature. There is another attempt at this now floating around Columbus, Ohio by lawmakers and the debate that it has spawned has been predictable. But for me, it is simply the legislature that is trying to catch up to the reality and intent of the original Constitution. This “duty to retreat” stuff is completely wrong. When assaulted with a threat, no human being has a duty to retreat, under any circumstance just to protect some hippie view of some collective existence being more important than individual ownership and the maintenance of private property.

Listening to the current crop of Democrats and open socialists running for president, all who support gun control and therefor the destruction of individual rights in favor of group affiliations, it makes me sick to think that we paid a lot of money for their educations only to have them grow up and become……that. Joe Biden isn’t going anywhere in the presidential election, but he’s been in the top job and knows better, yet when he talks about restricting gun magazines that can feed a gun in a firefight, he is way off his rocker. Citizens can’t have inferior weaponry to the state-controlled military. Who controls a potential out of control military if the wrong people are running things from the White House? People have to be able to stand up to corruption and abuse of power, and you can’t be shooting BB guns when they come knocking on your door to confiscate your property because they want it, or to throw you in jail because you are representing the wrong political party. (Roger Stone)

Our military and police are not a one stop shop of honor and protection. They must ultimately be managed by the people who pay them, and if the power goes to their heads and they are the ones with all the heavy weapons, silencers, and high capacity magazines, then they have leverage over the population and that is not their job. And when politicians fail us, such as they did during the Trump election, someone must have the power to keep them in check. No matter what anybody thinks of Donald Trump, his election revealed massive corruption at the top of the food chain, particularly among the Democrat Party and their scandals planted in Ukraine for their own enrichment. It goes far beyond Joe Biden. When the FBI is willing to edit FISA warrants and use the law for their own political desires, they will do anything else to harm private citizens and it is for that reason that any law in any state has a duty to retreat, to give the bad guys the advantage over the good, pure and simple. We know that we can’t trust government. We need government to manage affairs, but we know the power goes to their heads often, and we need to defend ourselves when it does.

In one of my published works, The Symposium of Justice the book starts out by the police letting a rapist out of jail to go after a young girl in the community. The police have a levy on the ballot for more money so they want to remind people how much the police are needed by letting a rapist out of jail and driving him by the home of a young teenage girl to “nudge” him into making her into a target that will ultimately panic the public into voting for more police funds. Just short of the attack a vigilant shows up and beats the rapist up to near death ruining the plans the police had and saving the girl from disgrace. A lot of people who have read my book think all that sounded like fiction and conspiracy theory dribble, but I can report that the entire first scene, including the vigilante action is nearly biographical and based on my own experience with the police department in Mason, Ohio while I was raising my family there and we became complicated with a marijuana distribution ring that the police were protecting, going all the way up to the mayor at the time. So don’t ever tell me I have some moral obligation to “retreat” when threatened. If you know how the game works you have a right and duty to justice to stand your ground, and nothing else. That is why my book was called The Symposium of Justice, because it was a look at what justice really is as opposed to what political tides want it to be.

American society and the culture of Ohio as a state shouldn’t not have anywhere in any of its laws a duty to retreat from a threat leaving action to the authorities. We shouldn’t give power to politically motivated prosecutors and loser lawyers to prosecute individuals who protect themselves and others with a gun, there are far more dangerous crimes out there to worry about. But to allow guns to be villains because they give power to individuals is the wrong sentiment and has no place written or implied in law. Rather, the key to a great society is when individuals can protect what they build and work for when danger comes to alter their momentum. For instance, if a businessman is taking his wife out for a nice dinner and they pull up somewhere for leisure and a robber is looking to enrich themselves at the expense of the couple, the businessman should be able to shoot the bandit dead on the spot without question, then continue their night of enjoyment unhindered. The businessman and his wife should not be subjected to embarrassment and plunder while the authorities waste countless amounts of tax dollars tracking down the villain, especially if it is found out that the businessman is a political contributor to a rival party and the bandit was sent to embarrass the businessman and force him down into a hole to hide in with disgrace from being robbed. This happens more than people are willing to admit. But regardless, its not the job of the robbed to retreat. That is just ridiculous.

There should never be in any legal writing any right to retreat, it goes against the very nature of a good society itself. Such a thing only helps the ill intent of villains, never the good people that are just trying to live their lives. The intent of such a law is to attempt to regulate good behavior to the words on a page and the promise of an oath to God, and these days, neither mean much to the villains of our society. But the barrel of a gun does, and it is that which truly keeps our world good and peaceful. Every person has a right to stand their ground, and nothing else, under no other pretense. Especially in Ohio!

Rich Hoffman

The Hit Job: Understanding the impeachment attempt and the crimes behind it

I’ve said it all along, and so have many others, and now the start of a massive bombshell is starting to reveal itself to a sleepy public. The Trump impeachment hearings and attempt have always been about only one thing, trying to get rid of Trump so that he loses his ability to uncover the real conspiracy, that is the Obama White House is who tampered with the 2016 election attempting to put things in favor of Hillary Clinton. And they used their powers of government through the various intelligence agencies to weaponize their political intentions—which is way worse than Trump’s Ukraine call they are so up in arms about. The amount of villainy shown by Democrats in general, connected to the previous administration is absolutely so unbelievable that its difficult for most people to get their minds around. But the proof is coming out, specifically the evidence uncovered by Inspector General Michael Horowitz that an FBI lawyer manipulated a key investigative document related to the secretive surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser.

To make matters worse, since it was the Democrats who have been bringing up the Watergate scandal lately, trying to apply it to Trump for which there is absolutely no connection. If the cover-up in Watergate was the real crime, then what do you call an entire political party and previous presidential administration that has spent the last three years trying to pin every false narrative that they could to overthrow an election while covering up their own crimes in the attempt, and their massive corruption in dealing with Ukraine that consists of many people. I don’t know that there has ever been a bigger cover-up of crimes involving so many people than this case of the Democrats against President Trump. The only reason they have been so embolden has been because they have controlled the law. And now with the Trump administration, they control the Justice Department and it is terrifying to them that they will be found out. That is why they are coming after the President so hard.

If anybody cares to read the documents that were recently released on the Kennedy assassination, it will become very clear that our own government played a part in the execution of a president. Its no longer a conspiracy theory, and for a long time that fear is what kept presidents from looking too closely at things. Elected presidents were expected to play their part, do their ceremonial duties, and stay out of the business of the career politicians and unelected bureaucrats. The intelligence community has not been shy about it, they want everyone to make sure that they know who is really in charge and if presidents get in the way, they will be eliminated.

The political hits that are conducted by our intelligence agencies whether they get into the head of some lone gunman with daddy issues and drug problems and plant the seeds of destruction through psychological mechanisms or they do the work themselves, they have new methods of assassination these days that don’t connect so directly back to their fingerprints. In some ways the character assassinations they do these days are worse than just blowing the head off the president in a motorcade car. The sissy strategies of today’s metrosexual males and power climbing females are to assassinate characters, not people. Its cleaner, and less obvious. Killing a character isn’t technically against the law since they are public people usually anyway. Killing a person is, so this new strategy of killing characters is their new preferred method and the intelligence agencies committed to stopping Trump from getting elected were doing everything they could to manipulate that election, then blame their actions on everyone that wasn’t involved.

But if they could just make Trump disappear, don’t think they wouldn’t. These days with the improved secret service, and high visibility media culture, it is much harder to spin a story that a lone gunman took an assassination shot from some open window. So those avenues are not much of an option, instead they have resorted to actually trying to overturn elections which in many ways is an attack on our entire system as a republic. Its far more dangerous for them to assume so much power and to act on it than to just attempt to arrange the physical assassinations of the president and their people. It’s the intent here that we should all be concerned about, and the attempt to cover up the evidence through malicious means and the destruction of people’s character no matter what it costs. What we have witnessed from our government over the last three years should scare everyone, to the Supreme Court fights, to the fake Russian investigation, to this impeachment trial. It says a lot that Trump has had such a clean life that nobody has really been able to pin any kind of scandal to him. Probably the best result of putting a president in the White House that was used to celebrity and living under a magnifying glass for his entire life. In the end, that is probably the best skill Trump has had for this job, to protect himself from the character assassinations taking away that weapon from these new age assassins.

For myself, I don’t trust any of these institutions, especially now. If we ever want to repair that relationship, then they are going to have to come clean. As Horowitz has discovered, if an FBI employee is willing to modify a FISA document to falsely surveil a political target this time, they’ve done it before and likely many people have done the same thing, only they didn’t get caught. So how can we trust any of them ever for any case whatsoever, anywhere? We can’t, and that is the problem. We could apply the same standard to the Michael Flynn case where it appears that the FBI manipulated official records against the former general and national security adviser. If they will do it to Flynn, they certainly wouldn’t hesitate to do the same against you and me dear reader. These are bad, vicious people who have political revolution in mind, and they will do anything to see their intentions through. Anything.

So that is the story of this whole impeachment case. Its not that Trump did anything wrong, its all about trying to pin on him what the accusers have done themselves. They have been caught in an insurrection and their best way out of it is to destroy the administration that could bring justice to their doorstep, especially now that they’ve made an enemy of him. Things might not have gone so dark if they could have kept Comey close to President Trump and they just endured each other for a while, but Trump was smart and started firing everyone he suspected of sedition, and now things are starting to become clear with the bureaucrats out of the way, we are seeing the truth for the first time with hard evidence. These are dirty people sucking our taxpayer money up for their insidious deeds and a fight with them is inevitable. But we don’t need to take up arms against them. We can beat them at their own game as the first option, and that ladies and gentlemen, is what is about to happen. Enjoy!

Rich Hoffman

The Communist “Red for Ed” Teachers of Indiana: Working against America and using children as a hostage

The only thing I could think of as I watched the teachers of Indiana conduct their “Red for Ed” march showing force and solidarity toward the state legislature demanding more money, was that they’d have a lot more money if they didn’t eat so much and weren’t so monstrously fat. I mean, wow, what a bunch of fat slobs. Just contemplating the average weight of the protestors was enough to give scales everywhere room to pause with mechanical anxiety. And I can hear you now dear reader, that’s not very nice to say about teachers. After all, most of us know someone who is in the teaching profession and we don’t think of them as enemies of the state. They are our babysitters while we are off working and we want to think of them as good people, to ease our own minds. But make no mistake about it, these people are not our friends. What they want to teach our kids is not good, or healthy. The red part of their march is for the communism behind the teacher’s union movement, their core philosophy for which they want to teach our children. And the rest of it, the money they are demanding is to feed their fat faces while they sit on their asses all summer spending it on desserts, mixed drinks, and lattés.

All these participants of “Red for Ed” are public employees out of control advocating communism, and they are enemies of American life. When they say they are marching for “the children” they are lying to you. They are marching to take more money from taxpayers so that they can feed themselves with abundance doing as little as possible to earn that money. And most of us are just as guilty, we have given them control over our children just to get access to the free babysitting service that public education gives people, while they busy themselves with other things in life, ruining the minds of children everywhere. Most of us are products of public education, so we are shy about being critical of it, because in so doing, we must be a little critical of ourselves. But the whole scam has been a mess, and these losers are exacerbating it in ways that look to me to be threatening, and actions against our nation as domestic enemies.

Of course, pay is one of their concerns, but testing is another. The teacher’s union is against measures of success for which they are judged. Its hard for many to believe but that nice, bubbly teacher who lives down the road is a communist and enemy of the state because we envision that such villains would have a thin mustache and some uniform of the Soviet Union to designate them as such menaces, but their red t-shirts tell the same story. Just not one that we have been so inclined to identify due to our own need to avoid conflict on the matter. We could after all say the same thing about one of the worsts socialists that we have ever witnessed, Adolph Hitler. I’m sure someone loved him, he had a mom and dad and friends. He had a woman who loved him, heck, most of Germany loved him for a period of time. But he was still an evil socialist just as these “Red for Ed” teachers are blatant communists. What makes them dangerous is their ideas, and these days they are not shy about admitting so much. Their choice of the color red tells the whole story.

Their march in Indiana was intended to be a show of force, to show how they could bring the state to their knees much the way they did in Kentucky recently. It was intended as a threat to show how many free baby-sitting services would be lost to voters if the teachers walked off the job. More money or the children would suffer was their message and to many panic driven parents, they believe it. When parents put their children’s lives in the hands of communists willing to extort money from the taxpayers for a silly job that lasts only 9 months out of the year, the danger of these people could not be underestimated. They are not likely to blatantly torcher their students on some rack of pain, but rather their intentions are to destroy the minds of the youth and rob them of their wings of free-thinking flight. How else to explain the terrible international comparisons for American education measured against the world. For what we spend on public education, we should be the top. Instead, we are nowhere close, in most cases everyone is better than the American education system, and these losers want less measures, less testing, and even less children and hours in the classroom.

And who says that if they want to make a certain amount of money that they shouldn’t work a second job. For as little as they do work, they have plenty of time to do it. Why should they get paid well to sit on their asses for most of a 24-hour day? That is what they are demanding, a level of pay that their jobs clearly don’t deserve, and they want less testing so that nobody will really know how little they really do. I have to point out that when I’ve said these things to my local school system they offered to let me teach a classroom for a day, which I accepted. I even said that I would be willing to teach four classes at once, and of course they turned me down, because the teaching profession is easy compared to other things out there. Teachers aren’t sacrificing anything for our children. Teaching is a profession for those who generally don’t want to “do” in society. Those who teach can’t do you might say, otherwise they’d do something that pays them the money they are looking for to feed their voracious diets and expectations for leisure hours.

If they were just lazy fat slobs, as most of them appear to be, it wouldn’t be so enraging. But to make matters worse, they are openly advocating for communism, not by naming it, but by color. They are not even hiding their motivations anymore, and when they put it in front of our face like that, they are taking hostile actions against a Constitution that I love and cherish. I’m a person who has copies of the Federalist Papers, the Anti Federalist Papers and the Ohio Constitution right next to my reading chair that I go through leisurely at least once or twice a week while watching television, after I’ve read them all many times thoroughly. In the context of the philosophies of American life, represented in those documents, the “Red for Ed” teachers are hostile agents of villainy that want to clip the wings of our children’s intellectual growth, and they want us to pay them more money to do it, which is sheer insanity. And to make it even worse, they give us these huge asses to look at and squeaky mouths with turkey necks of fat dangling from their faces and expect even more from the taxpayer. At some point we have to say, enough is enough. We need a choice, a better system of education that does not involve a communist inspired teachers union, and we need people who care enough not to take a day off to threaten state legislators who should be representing the Constitutions of the states and federal level of government instead of listening to a bunch of government paid insurgents.

Rich Hoffman