There was a time when we both honored our past and held our future in common. Why this should be reviled puzzles us of a certain age.

Ol' Remus

Z Man summarizes his view of organizations in this essay, Rule By Sociopath: The arrival of women in positions of authority is the death knell of the organization. It means the smart money has moved onto greener pastures, leaving the enterprise to the vultures, who will pick over the corpse for the bits they like.

Feminists will get their stuff, homosexuals will make their demands, minorities will air their grievances. In time, the organization collapses under the weight of its own absurdity. That’s what’s happening in the West. It’s a scramble to strip the carcass of civilization.

Bill Kilgore writes of Broward County Sheriff deputy Scot Peterson in his essay, Cowards and Losers, at American Greatness: It is true that some men are hopeless cowards, and they deserve our pity. But we cannot raise our boys to believe that courage is a force outside of our control that either possesses you or it does not.

Instead we need to raise our boys to be men—men who understand that manliness is courage. Manliness is sacrifice. This is not a trait for heroes or Navy SEALs only; it must be a common trait in common men. We have to habituate men to pain and struggle; we must show them the higher reward for lower costs; we must habituate them to the idea that in that time of crisis they must be courageous.

... As unpleasant as it is, we must shame Scot Peterson, so our boys learn that there are things worse than dying. The shame of cowardice must be worse than death. Peterson didn't have to succeed. We don't know that he would have. But what might have made him try—the spirit that might have made him charge through the door and do his duty—was the spirit that said “I'll not be known as a coward.”

Mr. Kilgore apparently wrote this before more of Peterson's fellow deputies revealed themselves as cowards. Peterson ran away. The three others arrived during the shootings and protected themselves. Even if they were instructed to stand down, and there's no evidence they were, no man could comply with such an order. In uniform or not.

Monday I was running errands, stopped at the village gun store to chat and look around. It looked like he'd gone out of business. Guns and ammo displays empty to the bare walls. At the "big" gun store a half hour away, guns and ammo were still going fast, the formerly reliable stacks of bulk ammo were gone in half a day. A friend with tables at a gun show this weekend says a huge crowd stripped the place like locusts. He came back empty. My my my, how quickly "too late" can arrive. Ancient Origins - Five Surprising Things DNA has Revealed About our Ancestors ... our ancestors evolved surprisingly quickly
Posted by Brock Townsend at Tuesday, February 27, 2018 No comments: Links to this post "An excellent exposition"

Via 4 Branch 1929. Silent movies and hot jazz, flappers and bathtub gin, fast cars and dare devil aviators, and a near-parabolic stock market at dizzying heights. Shoeshine boys gave stock tips to grocery clerks who bought on margin. Everyone but the halt and lame made money. Well, except for the farmers. Commodity prices in the '20s were often at or below the cost of production. But you know. Rubes. In the places that counted, cities dontcha know, the future shone bright and steady.

One dark day the bottom of the bucket fell through, everyone was suddenly foreclosed and evicted, destitute and skinny, and not dressed very well at all. The Nouveau Broke spent the next decade doing Depression Era stuff like living in shacks by the river or taking up the migrant worker trade in old cars made worse by unsightly dust and grime.

So goes the Hollywood version. Reality was worse.

The market peaked in early September 1929, capping a tenfold gain in nine years. But it was stuttering and oddly reluctant to go higher. Word came of trouble in other places, particularly the London market. Important people said the US market was overpriced by a standard deviation or six. Main Street had bet the rent money and was getting anxious. In October, the weak hands and Nervous Nellies bolted for the door en masse and everyone else followed, perforce. The cascade began.

What became known as "The Crash of 1929" is shown in red on the chart, a catastrophic fifty per cent drop from the September high. But the crash had just begun. A series of declines and partial retracements went on for years, ending in mid-1932 with an 89% loss from the '29 peak. It should be known as "The Crash of 1929 Through 1932".

It's easy to get market arithmetic wrong. If the market drops 50% then goes back up 50%, only half the drop has been regained. Said differently, a 50% drop requires a 100% rise to break even. There were six partial recoveries from 1929 to 1932. Fortunes were made by savvy opportunists who understood the stair-step nature of the debacle and played it like day traders. This drew in camp followers who, convinced they were buying at the absolute bottom, generally sold into the next decline at a loss.

The crash ended as it began, with a drop of about fifty per cent. Almost no one except buyers noticed, the prices were so small, the prior destruction so vast. Once again market arithmetic is misleading. For shareholders, the loss of half the value of their investment was the same in 1932 as it was in 1929.

Although they cause misfortune, market crashes aren't a misfortune in themselves, they're the wringing out of mispricing and malfeasance. The market eventually acts as intended, to discover the present value of stocks through open bidding. The principle is simple, a stock is worth what a buyer will pay, all else is blather. Nor are there truly innocent victims of a crash, people choose to buy stocks rather than, say, bonds or beer or nothing at all.

The crash itself didn't define the Depression, deflation did. Imagine the dollar buying more as time went on, as not only a store of value but a store of increasing value. Employers cut wages, partly for self-preservation but also because prices fell, lower wages would buy what the higher wages did before, or near enough. This had consequences. The "velocity of money" slowed—money changed hands less often—and as money became literally scarce, commerce slowed. By 1933 the economy of Main Street was so near to paralysis many cities issued their own currency .

A market crash may start like a canoe full of nuns and puppies going over a waterfall, but it takes time to completely play out, partly because it responds to the fluctuations of a contracting economy, partly because it tracks the passing of debt from hand to hand. Debt doesn't disappear when defaulted or even forgiven, all debt is eventually paid by someone, by the borrower or the lender, or by a third party. When the third party is DC, it offloads debt from its favored clients onto everyone else. And it's here we find the bad news: like the '29 crash, the next crash and its follow on depression will linger until debts are settled. You should live so long.

An epic crash is no more predictable than it is preventable. Oddsmakers are now saying late March, others say next year, or when the chart forms a classic head-and-shoulders, or Dow 30,000. Maybe. Watch the bond market, it's the likeliest proximate cause.

A market crash is America's boogeyman. Once released into the wild the long-warranted economic implosion follows. The fall into general poverty will be unstoppable, opening the deepest cracks in society. Most cities and many states, already insolvent, will collapse outright, overwhelmed by unpayable debt, unable to maintain essential services much less bribes for urban peace. History says three years from start to bottom. Stay away from crowds.
Posted by Brock Townsend at Tuesday, February 27, 2018 2 comments: Links to this post Bad Guy with Knife Stopped by Good Guy with AR-15 A man armed with an AR-15 saved a neighbor who was being attacked with a knife Monday in Oswego Township, Illinois.

WGN 9 reports that the incident unfolded at an apartment complex on Harbor Drive, “when someone with a knife attacked another person during an argument.”

Dave Thomas (pictured) witnessed the attack on his neighbor, retrieved his AR-15, and ordered the attacker to stop.

Thomas said, “I poked my head out the door. There was a pool of blood, blood was everywhere in the hall. There was still a confrontation going on, there were about three or four people involved at this point. So I ran back into my house and grabbed my AR-15. I grabbed the AR-15 over my handgun — bigger gun, I think a little more of an intimidation factor. Definitely played a part in him actually stopping.”

Police arrived and arrested the suspect, while the victim was taken to the hospital in an unknown condition.

Thomas gave a statement afterward, saying, “The AR-15 is my weapon of choice for home protection. It’s light, it’s maneuverable. If you train and know how to use it properly, it’s not dangerous. And this is just a perfect example of good guy with an AR-15 stopped a bad guy with a knife. And there were no lives taken, so all in all it was a good day.” 16 Stupidest Comments About the Parkland Shooting Massacre (So Far) The results of this cynical and desperate crusade have not only exposed these provincial elites as completely opposed to keeping our children safe, but as liars, and morons.

Here are the 16 most dishonest and/or stupidest things we have heard so far…
CNN “expert” Tom Fuentes says we should not arm trained and qualified teachers because most teachers are girls and girls can’t conceal a gun when they dress like girls.

“If you wear a dress, if you wear a skirt, are you going to have to wear a jacket everyday with a belt and a holster, the way a detective on duty would do? Fuentes asked. “It’s not a real practical solution for a variety of reasons.”(Good Lord, ignorance knows no limit) Saigon Skyline 1969 With Dave on the roof of OICC's Nguyen Dinh Chieu apartments. Dave missed the last evacuation bus, so took a taxi to TSN , but had a difficult time getting in the gate though was finally successfully. The Eternal Lure of Nationalism

More @ Patrick J. Buchanan
Posted by Brock Townsend at Tuesday, February 27, 2018 3 comments: Links to this post A Very Personal Opposition to Gun Control

More @ Red Pill Jew
Posted by Brock Townsend at Tuesday, February 27, 2018 8 comments: Links to this post More with video @ Fox Steve Scalise Defiantly Defends 2nd Amendment

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise knows firsthand what can happen when a firearm ends up in evil hands. After a crazed gunman decided to take out his leftist-rage on unsuspecting congressmen in June last year, Scalise nearly lost his life.

Reportedly angry with President Donald Trump and Republicans in general, 66-year-old James Hodgkinson exacted his revenge on innocent Republican congressmen, opening fire while the group practiced for the Congressional Baseball Game in Alexandria, Virginia, Chicago Tribune reported.

After Congressman Scalise was shot in the hip, the bullet “broke bones, tore up internal organs and cause(d) major internal bleeding,” and left him in critical condition, The New York Times reported.

After months of recovery and several surgeries, Scalise returned to his position on Capitol Hill in September.

More @ CT At this stage of his presidency, Reagan had completed 49 percent of the Heritage policy recommendations.
“We’re blown away,” Binion said in an interview. Trump, he said, “is very active, very conservative, and very effective.” Real Time Data on the Number of Deaths and Causes in the U.S.

Via Badger from Jan 1, 2018 - Feb 27, 2018 (4:45:31 PM)

Abortion *:172,623

@ Romans 322
Posted by Brock Townsend at Tuesday, February 27, 2018 1 comment: Links to this post ........the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed (most recently in 2005) that police have no constitutional duty to protect members of the public from harm.

More @ LRC "Yes, Virginia, You Can Own A Machine Gun" …and Gun Facts For The Newly Uninformed

For those of you who are new to the public debate about All Things Guns that has sprung up since the Parkland, FL tragedy, this brief primer is for you whether you are a mommy, daddy, guardian or teacher of school-age children. Most of all, if you are a politician or reporter, this one has your name on it.

A basic Google search for “guns” returns 299,000,000 results in 0.52 seconds. So why another gun article? The cacophony of stultifying idiocy polluting media outlets via the Evening News, talk radio “commentary”, wasting untold newsprint and bandwidth demands it. Never has the old saw, “He only knows enough to be dangerous” been more evident than in the blatherings of those who have swallowed whole the mistruths, half-truths and outright lies on everything from “firearm terminology” to the “gun show loophole.” Indeed, many of the spouting pundits hosing audiences with their indubitable certitude are motivated by an evil political agenda that has been marinated in decades of gun grabbing propaganda, fear mongering elitism. And worse. (See MSDNC’s “Morning Joe”)

Posted by Brock Townsend at Tuesday, February 27, 2018 6 comments: Links to this post Supreme Court rules immigrants can be detained indefinitely Immigrants can be held by U.S. immigration officials indefinitely without receiving bond hearings, even if they have permanent legal status or are seeking asylum, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

In a 5-3 ruling Tuesday, with Justice Elena Kagan recusing, the court ruled that immigrants do not have the right to periodic bond hearings.

The ruling is a defeat for immigration advocates, who argued that immigrants should not be held for more than six months at a time without such a hearing. Charlottesville Judge Rules Lee Monument IS a War Memorial & Tarps Must Come Down in 15 Days The Virginia Flaggers

#BreakingNews from Charlottesville.

Judge rules Robert E. Lee statue DOES qualify as a war memorial, which means is IS protected by state law, as we knew all along. Book Review: Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States A review of Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States (Charleston Athenaeum Press, 2014) by Gene Kizer, Jr.

In all my growing up years I was taught that the War Between the States was fought over slavery.

That’s what the “history” books, so called, told us and it is certainly what the “news media” has screamed about as the cause of the War for decades now. It’s what the entertainment industry has thrown at us for decades also. I still recall watching the movie Gettysburg in which a Confederate prisoner of war asked a Union officer why he was fighting and the Union officer replied “To preserve the Union and free the slaves.” The fact that the Union had no right to free anyone in another country never seemed to occur to him. I’ve often asked the question–if the Union was so hot to free the slaves then why didn’t they start out by freeing those slaves in Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, all of which, for various reasons, remained in the Union. I have yet to get a satisfactory answer. Mr. Kizer has asked the same question and I doubt he has gotten one either. Part of the reason for that just might be that the War was really not about slavery to begin with. FedEx won't end relationship with NRA FedEx announced Monday it won't end its relationship with the National Rifle Association despite facing scrutiny to cut ties with the association after a school shooting in Parkland Fla., left 17 people dead.

The company said the NRA is one of the "hundreds of organizations" in their alliances/associate marketing program and they will not deny service or discriminate against them. How George Soros is meddling in the Italian elections A few weeks ago, the United Kingdom woke up to the realization that its democratic process is vulnerable to the attacks by a foreign plutocrat seeking to overturn the result of the popular vote of British citizens via a second referendum on the European Union membership, or in case that was not possible, to overthrow government after government until the Hungarian-American oligarch got his way.1)

George Soros, replied by penning an article for the Daily Mail,2) in which he motivated his actions by “his love for Britain”, which somehow did not stop him from attacking the Bank of England in 1992, which cost British taxpayers billions. He simply knows better, and so demands the right to hijack the political process of a democratic country, despite not being a citizen, because he’s fighting against “mafia-states”. It speaks volumes about Soros’s concept of “Open Society” where he’d be free to run the political show of any country, in a borderless world, where any vote contrary to his would be made null and void. Russia overtakes China in gold reserves race to end US dollar dominance The Central Bank of Russia (CBR) boosted its holdings of gold by almost 20 metric tons last month, with reserves reaching 1,857 tons. It has increased its holdings every month since March 2015.

Russia is now among the top five gold holders after surpassing China, which reportedly holds 1,843 tons. Over the last 15 years, Moscow and Beijing have been aggressively accumulating gold reserves to cut their dependence on the US dollar.

More @ RT Why Is CNN’s Approval Rating For Trump 15 Points Lower Than Rasmussen’s? If I were to start doing a poll of presidential approval, I personally would do registered voters,” Kondik told TheDCNF in July 2017. “If you’re looking specifically at trying to figure out the electoral effects, you’re probably better off doing registered voters or likely voters.”

CNN is skewing polling data to show the majority of Americans disapprove of the way President Donald Trump is handling the presidency.

The network published a poll Sunday that claims 35 percent of American adults approve of how Trump is performing as president. Those results are in stark contrast to a Monday Rasmussen Reports poll that found 49 percent of respondents approved of how the president is managing the White House.

What accounts for a roughly 15 percentage point disparity?

More @ The Daily Caller Is the (Tea) Party Over? More @ Ron Paul Institute Dems introduce bill banning assault weapons Reps. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) and Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) formally introduced a bill on Monday to ban assault weapons.
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