John Grimshaw, Wintery Moon, 1886

John Grimshaw, 1836-1893, was a versatile English painter who excelled at any genre he turned his hand to, and he did them all, but is best known for his knockout moonlit and gaslit scenes. Now that the glacial overburden of anti-Victorian orthodoxy has receeded, Grimshaw's stuff is enjoying serious rediscovery and well attended exhibitions. Not to mention "quoted", Kinkade among them, alas. Nearly unreserved rehabilitation of this era's art is becoming an oft-told tale.

Which brings up a point. When Woodpile Report was young, traditional art was still the disowned ancestor of modern art. It was tough to find decent scans, although improving. Then the bottom fell outta the bucket, excellent repros were everywhere, its audience grew like kudzu. Just as outlier politics are now unexceptional—here's a secret: the alleged mainstream is the real fringe and always has been—so too is traditional art on the web now unexceptional. No connection I would defend, but it's good, I can post fewer marquee works and more of the overlooked ones. No big kozmik troof here, merely an observation.

There is outstanding work being done by living masters, and I'd like to use some of it, but copyright laws being what they are it's too chancey. For those who'd like to learn more about the revival of traditional art, and how close it came to be obliterated, this essay , "The ARC Philosophy" by Fred Ross at the Art Renewal Center, is the go-to source. Can't beat it, instant expertise in a jar. Amaze your friends.

Note to readers: As the newsy used to tell us kids when we'd sit on the floor 'n read the comic books, "I ain't runnin' no library here." It was quite a while before I even numbered Woodpile Report. Archive?! Pffft. Ain't any. Takes time to set up and maintain, never saw any point to it, but for those who do, 397 and up are still on the server. Here's the url format to get to 'em:

./index-397.htm

 

Remus's notebook for 15 December 2015
Intended as the quickest of quick reads but
with a link for those who want to follow up

Sense of Events - Title 8, Section 1182 of the U.S. Code provides in relevant part: Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

Remus says - It's legit. For full text go to Legal Information Institute, Title 8, Section 1182 of the U.S. Code, Inadmissible Aliens, see (f), Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President

Market Ticker - The Donald called for an immediate halt to all Muslims coming to America—as tourists, as refugees, as immigrants. This would not be a permanent policy change. But to halt the flow of people into the country that happens to include essentially all terrorists in today's world until we change our national policies to deter the effectiveness of terrorism and better detect those who are terrorists is not only intelligent it is necessary.

Washington Post - Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus on Tuesday condemned Donald Trump's proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the United States.
washingtonpost.com

Remus says - The usual defenders of "diversity at any price" in the news media gasped and swooned in perfect harmony:

Washington Post - Donald Trump has crossed an uncrossable line of bigotry and xenophobia.
washingtonpost.com

Philadelphia Daily News - Donald Trump's political movement has clearly crossed the line into fascism.
philly.com

New York Times - Donald Trump, a bigot without foreign policy experience, showed that there is nothing he won’t say or support to sow hatred.
nytimes.com

Remus says - while the cloistered cupcakes of the DC-New York axis were hyperventilating over immigration details, we slipped closer to a 1914-style debacle:

Putin, via Zero Hedge - Regarding the submarine strikes ... This new, modern, highly efficient, and highly precise weapon can be equipped with both a conventional warhead as well as a special, nuclear warhead.  Naturally, in the fight against terrorism that is unnecessary, and I hope there will be no need to use nukes against the Islamic State.

Steyn Online - They regard their primary identity as Muslim - and their citizenship as a mere travel document. One reason why Trump's "outrageous" remarks never dent his numbers a whit is because to significant numbers of people he sounds far less insane than the mainstream consensus - now insisting that all these psycho "American" and "European" terrorists demonstrate why we'd be much better off letting in millions of "refugees".

Guardian - A leaked internal Islamic State manual shows how the terrorist group has set about building a state in Iraq and Syria. It builds up a picture of a group that, although sworn to a founding principle of brutal violence, is equally set on more mundane matters such as health, education, commerce, communications and jobs. In short, it is building a state.

Remus says - Some liberal outfits are opposing not only the denial of gun purchases by those on the no-fly list, but the no-fly list itself. Zero Hedge compilation here .

Washington Post, about the no-fly list - If you have probable cause to think he's a terrorist, and think you can develop proof beyond a reasonable doubt, arrest him. Even if you have only suspicion, follow him, ask people about him, and so on. But if you don't have enough to prosecute or even arrest someone, you can't take away his constitutional rights, even if you suspect he's a terrorist.

Liberty's Torch - No one is required to answer to anyone else for his political affiliations or his policy positions. No one is obligated to suffer the assaults of others, especially when those others are openly trying to silence you or intimidate you.

Intergalactic Source of Truth - His presidency is marked by forgery, evasion, well-funded concealment, and open discussion of his prior heavy drug use and his homosexuality. It's obvious that Obama will do all in his power to hinder the development of any kind of a healthy appreciation of the dangers of having Muslims living beside us infidels in our own country.

Eric Peters Autos - The Social Security Number is now officially being used for purposes of identification – just as they swore up and down it never would be. It was only going to be a government social insurance program, to keep old folks from shivering and starving in the winter. Never to be the basis for a nationwide cattle-cataloging system. Surprise, surprise. They lied. Again.

USA Today - It's a bit hard to take people seriously about Trump's threat to civil liberties when President Obama was just endorsing an unconstitutional gun ban, when his attorney general was threatening to prosecute  people for anti-Muslim speech  and when universities and political leaders around the country are making clear their belief that free speech is obsolete.

Let's have a little fun. One of Remus's favorite armored vehicles is the doughty M5 Stuart light tank from World War II. Kyle Myers plays his Russian character Dmitri Potapoff putting this pristine survivor through its paces. YouTube video, "FPSRussia Goes to Whitecastle—In a tank". 8m 19s.

 

1939. Yakima Valley, Washington

Yakima Valley in south-central Washington was, and still is, a major agricultural area. This migrant family is camped by a feeder creek to the Yakima River. Notice the Washington license plate. The boy appears to be protecting his little sister from the stranger. True masculinity.

 

1939. Toppenish, Washington

Toppenish is a town in Yakima County with a population of about 3,600 in 1939. The Mom is hiding her face, not uncommon when the family's lot was at its lowest ebb and an FSA photographer drove up and treated them as specimens to be inspected at will. Aside from all that, think about what "hard times" used to mean when you say "I'm hungry" every time your appetite gives you a tickle or when you think you're roughing it because your car air conditioning conked out.

 

Michelle Malkin - FBI agents are condemned as bigots when they attempt the most modest of surveillance measures, and they are damned as bumblers when they fail to act on information gathered through those means. Perhaps you’ve forgotten how Muslim groups balked after 9/11 when federal investigators went to mosques to ask about knowledge of terrorist attacks. What were they supposed to do — go to Catholic nunneries and Buddhist temples instead?

And let’s remember amid this latest outbreak of anti-profiling hysteria that the same grievance groups who object to taking ethnicity, religion and national origin into account during wartime zealously defend discriminatory racial and ethnic classifications to ensure “diversity” on college campuses, guarantee government contracts for minorities, and achieve manufactured “parity” in police and fire departments.

 

New Republic - Ban guns. All guns. Get rid of guns in homes, and on the streets, and, as much as possible, on police. Not just because of San Bernardino, or whichever mass shooting may pop up next, but also not not because of those. Don't sort the population into those who might do something evil or foolish or self-destructive with a gun and those who surely will not. Ban guns! Not just gun violence. Not just certain guns. Not just already-technically-illegal guns. All of them.

Author Phoebe Bovy lives in Toronto Canada and has a Ph.D. from NYU in French Studies. Currently an instructor at the University of Toronto but looking for other opportunities, no surprise, and she's "writing a book with St. Martin's Press about the idea of privilege." How like a girl. My impression: she has a New Yorker Magazine "smart set" way about her—chatty and confessional, sardonic asides, dwells on food minutia &c. She's certain the world shades into yurt-infested steppes somewhere beyond the furthest deli convenient to her apartment, certain her friends think her quite dazzling and name pets after her, and writes on themes trickled down to her in jest at wine and cheese parties for emerging poets. She discovered too late a degree ending in "studies" is widely, and charitably, considered dubious and is frantic to establish credentials elsewhere. Oh, guns? She doesn't care one way or the other. It's a train she couldn't afford to miss. Just a guess.

 

Huffington Post - Given that even micro gun control measures will be effectively blocked by the NRA and its allies, and that promoting mini measures as potentially effective is misleading, progressives may as well go for the big enchilada: Call for domestic disarmament. We may have to get to domestic disarmament through the back door.

Author Etzioni knows guns, he's a guerilla-commando combat veteran. His family fled Germany in 1935 and settled in Palestine, emigrated to Berkely California in 1957. Sociology, natch. His Communitarianism gig is pretty much what you'd expect it to be, rebranded kibbutz-style collectivism with the usual hard bias against the individual and natural rights. What we have here is a name brand but tired man—he's 86—keeping his bona fides current.

 

Daily Kos - Let's get serious about what it will take, for "meaningful steps" to actually BE, meaningful steps. Otherwise, let's skip to the chase and admit: "It's all just window-dressing, and political payback to the NRA." What has to go? All magazine fed, self-loading firearms. Yes, that means handguns too. Yes, that includes your 4 shot Remington hunting rifle. Yes, that includes rigid controls on police firearms.

Nothing says they've lost more plainly than apocalyptic tantrums. Their ship has capsized and they're shaking their fists. Savor the moment. This one is insufferably dreary. After waving the bloody shirt it immediately bogs down into a long procedural fantasy, protracted self-arousal I suspect, with an occasional whiff of red meat intended to, but failing to, keep the reader attentive. Think last orders from the Fuhrer bunker: ghost armies, wonder weapons, unshakable will—that sort of stuff. Touching in a way.

 

Washington Post - When debating the wisdom of the Constitution's Second Amendment, the media tends to start from the presumption that the question is purely scientific, and that the answers can — and should — be derived from statistical analyses and relentless experimentation. This approach is mistaken. The right of the people to keep and bear arms is not the product of the latest research fads or exquisitely tortured “data journalism.”

 

Wired - The AR-15 industry will one day reach the point at which it will be fair to say that the military is taking civilian technology and “militarizing” it, instead of vice versa. Most of the innovation that has gone into the AR-15 has been aimed at making the gun as accurate and pleasurable to shoot as possible. The result is a gun that really is an order of magnitude easier to use effectively than many of the traditional wood-stocked rifles that black-rifle-hating hunters grew up with.

Remus says - Who woulda thunk Wired, the oracle of Silicon Valley, the Peaceable Kingdom Except With Video Games, would post an article on the AR-15 bordering on admiration? The mind reels. If they've lost Wired there's no recovery.

 

Fred On Everything - In May of 2018, the second year of Mrs. Clinton’s administration, national puzzlement was high over the continuing wave of mass killings. The head of Homeland Security, Chupamela Sanchez-Jones, explained it succinctly: “It is almost impossible to prevent attacks when they have nothing in common. What do you look out for? What is the connection between killing children, firebombing a restaurant, and flying aircraft into buildings? There is none. It is baffling.” There was no pattern except the strange cry, “Allahu Akbar.”

 

The Crash of 1929

Who says they didn't jump outta windows? But the lesson has been learned. Now they push their customers outta windows.

 

The Declination - Traditional masculinity died before I was born, and those of us who seek to resurrect it have only an image of what it once was. We call the generation that fought in World War II the “Greatest Generation.” But they do not describe themselves this way. In the world in which they were raised, doing your masculine duty was  expected. It was normal. It wasn't great, per se, so much as it was the bare minimum. A minimum, I might add, that very few of us live up to. Instead we build man caves, because we effectively cede the rest of our lives to the feminine.

 

National Review - When Cornel West, or Eric Holder, or Melissa Harris-Perry, or Van Jones starts in on cable news whining about white privilege, whom are they addressing? The unemployed welder in South Carolina? The tractor driver outside Merced? The out-of-work coal miner in the Appalachians? Or is it all rather in-house scapegoating between black and white elites of the same class over the allotment of academic, media, and government privilege?

 

Traditional Right - Islam wants to have it both ways: at the same time it condemns civil society, demanding Sharia replace it, it seeks all the benefits civil society provides. The public, both here and in Europe, is beginning to perceive the contradiction. Each new incident of Islamic violence on Western soil will make that contradiction more clear. At some point, the state will have to resolve it or lose its legitimacy. A registry is a good, and rather moderate, place to start.

 

From time to time I've said on these pages you'd know collapse was at hand when emergencies come close enough together DC couldn't get ahead of them. Then couldn't keep up with them. Now they won't even admit to them. ISIS is not defeated or contained. Duh. The ones over here aren't even particularly inconvenienced. They've invaded us, and they continue to invade all but unimpeded. DC is not taking this seriously. Most Moslems pray for global sharia and for everyone else to be converted or enslaved. They confess their militancy this way, irreversibly and irretrievably. I'll believe DC is serious when I see them lock down the borders and rid us of them.

Larry Kudlow via Breitbart - ISIS and related Islamic terrorists are already here. More are coming. We must stop them. My shift in thinking comes from a deep desire to strengthen homeland security. Hopefully an immigration freeze will not be in place for very long. But for now I believe we must do it. And let me add, as I have in the past, if the U.S. has the will, the urgency, and the energy to destroy ISIS, then we will destroy ISIS.

Okay, so they won't do this. It stinks of justice. How about a Plan B. The jihadists-in-waiting know who they are, DC knows who they are, only we, their intended victims, don't know who they are. Why not give us a heads up? Consider a neighborhood alert system similar to the sex offender registry. Body counts are no way to let us in on their secret. And planning to save the day at the last minute is nice in theory, but look who's taking all the risk without the career benefits.

Notice also how thoroughly the perps are researched after they've slaughtered their personal quota of infidels. Not before. After. Then DC has all the resources it needs to investigate their movements and associates and history, with spare personnel to stage news conferences reminiscent of an NFL half time. Why not the same level of scrutiny before they were allowed in? As it is, Moslem psychos know they're invisible until they pull the trigger, and they'll continue to be invisible for as long as we think DC is fighting them by drawing chalk lines around our bodies.

DHS was promised to be spectacularly effective by integrating formerly separate agencies. Yet after every attack they're as clueless as we are, then they apologize for missing obvious and plentiful tip offs. They call it "intelligence failure." Yes it is. DHS a huge operation. We pay for it in money and the nearly complete compromise of our former privacy. 240,000 employees and a 55 billion dollar budget, yet clues with rotating red lights and honking horns don't get noticed. No one need wonder why people believe DC has a Moslem problem of a different kind .

Nor are they serious about "see something, say something". The real message is "say something and be squashed like a cockroach." Ask the teachers who said something about Ahmed the Clock Boy's pretend bomb. Oh wait, maybe you can't, they may still be in hiding, or cleaning rest stops for a living. Ask Miss Loretta, the twit in charge of DoJ, the one who threatened us for talking among ourselves, the one who belonged to apro-terrorist outfit—ask her about saying something. You'd better have a notarized, actionable bill of particulars when her well dressed and very inquisitive agents visit. If you don't, she's made it plain you'll be pilloried and prosecuted for inciting violence with your bigoted hate talk, and that's not who we are, you racist nazi pig.

Taki's Magazine - People continue to ignore terror warning signs. The San Bernardino neighbors weren’t stupid. Just the opposite—they were acutely observant. They knew that, had they reported their suspicions, and had they been wrong, they’d have been sued, held up by CAIR as hate criminals, and excoriated by the media. Risking a mass-murder spree is actually considered the lesser of two evils compared to being seen as racist.

DC spends a lot of our time telling us a disarmed citizen is a safe citizen. Somehow. People are thinking differently about these things. Tens of millions have bought guns on mounting evidence government can't, or more accurately, won't protect them. Yet we see DC protecting our resident Moslems to the last drop of our blood. This is not a stable arrangement. Meanwhile, Obama tells us to stop taking these little annoyances so seriously. Instead he proposes we Rise As One to make the climate stop changing. It's time for DC to get serious before the electorate compels them to. DC has to change, and what has to change will change.

~~~~~o~~~~~

 

Front Page - CAIR wants to make America safe for Sharia law and bully Americans into not questioning Islam, a religion that has been generating a massive body count for 1,400 years. CAIR exists to undermine law enforcement and U.S. national security. The group's goal “is to create as much self-doubt, hesitation, fear of name-calling, and litigation within police departments and intelligence agencies as possible so as to render such authorities ineffective in pursuing international and domestic terrorist entities.”

 

Atlantic Centurion - There are essentially three reasons why Muslims are the ultimate designated oppressed group, and why therefore signaling tolerance for them becomes a drug abuse problem for liberals. The first is that Muslims are easily the least liked ethno-religious demographic in the United States. The second reason is that Muslims won’t return the favor, establishing the signaler as a true altruist. Finally, there is the issue of Muslims being a third world population, something the new left idolizes as authentic in its struggle against oppression and for liberation.

 

Off The Grid News - There are a few stories of certain foods remaining safely edible for upwards of 100 years. While the majority of these claims have been merely anecdotal, there is no doubt that some foods can easily last decades or more under the right conditions. Here are 3 foods that are easy to make or gather that will easily outlast typical canned or dried survival foods.

Also: Does Freezing Food Really Kill Bugs?

 

The Art of Manliness - If you were going to be stranded somewhere in the wild or were facing an impending apocalypse, and could only outfit yourself with one implement, you would be wise to choose the axe. Part tool, part weapon, it’s no mystery as to why men have felt a primal attraction towards axes for thousands of years. It’s an allure that manifests itself beginning at a young age. The simplicity of the ax — the fact you can grab it and go anywhere — is a beautiful thing.

 

1944. Wartime Old Gold ad

The ad copy tells us Latakia was added in 1942, a peppery blender tobacco cured over a wood fire, pricey import. It's a tasty condiment to be blended sparingly even in pipe tobacco. In 1943 they started misting their tobacco with apple juice—promoted to "apple honey" in the copy—to extend freshness by sequestering moisture. True apple honey is a premium honey gathered from bees pollinating apple blossoms exclusively, or near enough. I looked it up.

 

 

 

Zero Hedge - You can agree to give up your natural right of self defense, and the Second Amendment that was written to stop the government from infringing upon this natural right, in the hopes that the government will protect you. This is an account of two home invasions, one where the victims chose not to take responsibility for their own safety, one where the intended victims were armed. The outcomes were very different.

 

Sultan Knish - The effort to strangle the Bolshevik baby failed because of a lack of Western commitment. The same appears to be true of the campaign against ISIS. The conviction that the Communists represented the popular will and could not be defeated became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The same approach has been taken to Islamic terrorist groups such as Hamas and its Muslim Brotherhood parent. The next stage is acceptance. ISIS has not done anything that the Soviet Union did not do. Its ideology is thoroughly different, but both were built on swamps of atrocity, mass murder, mass rape, ethnic cleansing and raw butchery. If the left could serve the Soviet Union, who is to say that it won't learn to love the Islamic State?

 

News Australia - For years experts have warned there would come a day when antibiotics would cease being effective. And it seems that day could be sooner than first thought after scientists discovered a new superbug that is not just impervious to the last line of defence medication, but has the ability to infect other bacteria. "It was a problem when we heard they were found in China a couple of weeks ago but one had hoped that it would just be in China and wouldn’t spread too quickly but they have now found it in Denmark."

Remus says - Among the possibilities are intentional malevolent gene-splicing, by parties unknown except by motive and expertise. Bad as this is, any practicing paranoid would see this as preparing the ground for a biowar attack.

 

French Resistance

Train de douze ans, l'express militaire de Calais, sera retardee indefiniment.

No info with this one. I see three flatcars carrying Panzer V Tiger tanks, turrets turned backwards for transport. The locomotive has taken a hit just forward of the cab and another in the drivers—notice the dangling air reservoir and damaged walkway. The pilot truck is askew, as are the utility poles behind the locomotive. Best guess: an air strike, newly liberated western France, summer of '44—sounds like a song title. The front access is open, perhaps the locomotive is being appraised: rebuild or scrap yard. Captured Tigers were used by the French Army into 1947. Wouldn't you?

 

American Thinker - Federal Judge Susan Dlott wrote the book on racial profiling in 2002. Last week, she ripped it into one million tiny pieces when three black people broke into her $8 million Cincinnati home and started beating her and her 79-year old husband. “There's three black men with guns at our house,” Dlott told a 911 operator after she escaped the home invasion and ran to her neighbor's house one mile away. That's Racial Profiling 101: Identifying the criminals by race, as if that had something to do with it. 

 

Today I Found Out - Characterized by a remarkable return of mental faculties and sometimes physical skills to terminal patients who were thought to have lost such abilities, Terminal Lucidity, while extraordinary, is also a very real and extremely mind boggling phenomenon that has largely been ignored by modern scientists, despite references to it going all the way back to Hippocrates. In many cases the physiology of the patient's brain had been so damaged, or their degraded mental state so profound, that there is currently no scientific explanation for their return into cognition.

 

Ars Technica - Research groups from Sweden and Mexico have now submitted pre-prints of two research papers to arXiv that claim to have discovered a massive object at the edge of the solar system. they suggest a "Super Earth" at a distance of about 300 astronomical units from the Sun, or about six times further than Pluto is at its aphelion. Another explanation is a "super-cool" brown dwarf at about 20,000 AU from the Sun.

 

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