Narcisse-Virgilio Diaz, Forest Scene, 1860

Narcisse-Virgilio Diaz was a Spanish orphan who lost a leg to an infected bite in his teens. He lived in Barbizon near Paris doing menial work until he was taught the fundamentals of oil painting by Rousseau in the last years of his life. A talented and hard worker, he became a central figure of the Barbizon school. Diaz died in 1876 at age sixty-nine.

 

Antifa posers with fantasies of a Civil War II need to worry more. ATF says more than half of all rifles sold were scary semiauto carbines. Combine these so-called "assault rifles" with the current Big Thing for traditional bolt action rifles: shooting very small targets at very long distances, and with more powerful ammo. Then explain to the campus commandos they do this as a hobby, for fun.

For the nonshooter's information, a practiced marksman with a well tuned bolt action rifle can hit a saucer at eight hundred yards, which is about the distance from the front door of the Empire State Building to the entrance of Penn Station/Madison Square Garden, or about two and a half city blocks. Incidentally, the bullet would hit the saucer more than a second before the sound of the "bang" arrived.

For a looksee on how it's done:

YouTube - Setting up your Long Range Hunting Rifle: 0 -1000 yards ... video, 23m 15s

In the video you'll hear the terms "MOA" and "minute". It means "minute of angle", or about an inch at a hundred yards, two inches at two hundred yards, and so on. A rifle that shoots a minute of angle will hit a maximum of one half-minute from point of aim. At eight hundred yards, this means four inches, in any direction, from point of aim. And minute of angle accuracy is unremarkable in precision shooting, it's considered entry level.

For comparison to those "trained professionals" in law enforcement, here's a quote from Duane Norman's report at Free Market Shooter:

When you hear about the NYPD taking 16 shots to kill one bad guy and accidentally wounding nine civilian passers-by, or officers firing 84 shots at a murder suspect and missing 83 times (with the only hit registering in the suspect’s calf), don’t blame the officers—blame their poor training and equipment.

Precision rifles typically have a two or three pound pull. Mr. Norman says New York City mandates a twelve pound trigger pull (!) for police duty weapons. For starters.

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This may be the most important development you'll read about this week.

Firearms News - Tazewell County Forms Militia in Response to New Virginia Gun Laws ... incredible news coming from Virginia, and is likely a move that anti-gun lawmakers and politicians did not expect.

Excerpt: " ... this is not limited to just our county, but also as part of a network of sister counties showing solidarity for both Virginia’s, and the American Constitution."

Tazewell County is in northwestern Virginia. In other news, the Culpepper County Sheriff announced he will deputize thousands of citizens "to protect their constitutional right to own firearms". Culpepper County is in northeast Virginia.

At last count more than 40 Virginia counties have declared themselves "gun rights sanctuary counties", meaning law enforcement is advised not to enforce unconsitutional gun laws. This is nearly half the state's counties. In response, Virginia Attorney General Herring made an announcement:

WTVR Richmond - Herring said when the General Assembly passes gun control legislation those laws will be enforced...

Following the November's election, which saw Democrats take control of both the state House and Senate, the expectation is lawmakers will pass a number of gun control measures in 2020 for Democratic Governor Ralph Northam to sign.

According to CNN, one proposed bill would "prohibit the sale, transport, possession, transfer and manufacturing of an assault firearm". It doesn't get much more "infringed" than that. Also in the works is the outrageous "universal background check" law, meaning all sales or transfers of all guns by any persons must include a background check. In effect this means going through an FFL to sell, trade, lend or give a gun to your neighbor.

CNN also notes the back alley treachery that brought things to this pass:

Everytown For Gun Safety, a gun-control group aligned with billionaire and presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg, played an outsized influence on the victory. The group spent $2.5 million in the state getting two Senate seats and one House seat flipped from Republican to Democrat in the November primaries.

Golly gee whiz Sparky, wherever did they get $2.5 million? If ever there were an example of an "enemy of the people", Mr. Bloomberg would be that example.

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Aesop at Raconteur Report opines on an Army Times article about their spiffy new small arms

The Army should STFU until they buy something that works, 24/7/365/anywhere/anytime, prove it by training the hell out of it for 20 years, until they wear out the first buy entirely, and decide it's so good they want MOAR!, and so beloved by the troops they'd throw away food and porn if they had to, just to hump it into combat.

And stop buying sales brochure b.s., which gets you the new Edsel class aircraft carrier, the F-35 Thunderjug, and "Diversity is our strength" kool-aid drinkers who hire soldierettes who can't throw a frag far enough not to eat their own shrapnel, transvestites who can't figure out which latrine to use.

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JMD at Survival Blog writes,

There has been a lot of discussion regarding the use of railroad tracks for travel in a post-SHTF world. On the plus side railways tend to be more isolated from built-up areas, so you may stand a better chance of avoiding people, and they tend avoid steep climbs and drops, which should make traveling somewhat easier. On the other hand, if you’ve ever tried walking a railroad track you know how difficult it can be to comfortably match your stride to the spacing of the ties, and if you need to run you’ll probably end up tripping. It’s also virtually impossible to ride a bike on railroad tracks without rattling your teeth out.

I'm one of those who would use railroad tracks, and have recommended doing so in Woodpile Report with some tips and cautions. I'm a diehard railfan who has walked miles of tracks, for decades, sometimes starting before sunup, sometimes until well after dark. You had better know what you're doing, even in normie times.

There are places where using railways make sense post-SHTF, other places not so much, still others never ever. I've given it much thought, but it didn't occur to me anyone would consider walking or riding a bike on the actual tracks. Let me count the ways it's over-the-top bizarre—no, not enough space. We'll have to settle for something like those inane safety stickers you find on stepladders.

In post-SHTF, even walking the adjacent Maintenance Of Way lanes may be unacceptably risky. Pick a railway, walk it for a few miles. Imagine hostiles. Much will be revealed. Now imagine walking on the actual tracks looking like those target ducks in a shooting gallery ... no, don't, the thought makes me queasy. The essay is otherwise valuable, worth a place in my reference archives, and yours.

Why use railways at all in sketchy times? Among many reasons, lightly used secondary or abandoned railways often have out-of-the-way bridges over waterways, as the author points out. These alone may be worth a significant detour, but if you're not a local you'd not know they existed. There are several railroad atlases in print, rich with detail, especially the regional editions. I keep 'em with my topos.

The internet is not a given post-SHTF. Maps are. I also do an eyeball check at intervals. It pays. Two such bridges on my bugout routes have been taken down over the years.

So. Enough of this. What else we got?

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Dan Bongino has launched an alternative to the Drudge Report, and it's very good. Drudge, for whatever reason , flipped to the dark side. Whatfinger News was the recommended fallback but it doesn't fill the gap, my opinion. The Bongino Report does, and it appears I'm not alone:

The Wrap - Dan Bongino Says Traffic Surge to His Drudge Report Competitor Forced a Last-Minute Server Upgrade

Update: Videos don't display. A page linked to from the home page didn't display. Perhaps this is temporary.

'Nuther update: now they display.

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The Daily Caller alerts us to the latest in Affirmative Action Education:

Wayne State University in Detroit dropped its general-education math requirement altogether. Bob Murphy, the director or university relations and policy for the Michigan Association of State Universities, told Inside Higher Ed that not requiring math will ideally “lead to more successful graduation outcomes.”

Yes, it will “lead to more successful graduation outcomes”, duh. And it will help close that pesky 'achievement gap' too. It's genius. Participation prizes all around. Everyone's a winner.

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Georgetown University asked, how would enrollment change at highly selective colleges if SAT scores were the sole factor in admissions decisions?

The White enrollment would grow by about 14 percent. Meanwhile, the combined Black and Latino enrollment at selective colleges would be reduced by 43 percent, and Asian enrollment would decline as well—by about 9 percent.

Wisdom in one breath

From cabystander, comment at Zero Hedge

The GOP never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

From Francis Porretto at Liberty's Choice

America’s 88,000 governments, which comprise over 500,000 elective offices and many millions of appointive and Civil Service positions, have given us ample reason to distrust them.

From Karl Denninger at Market-Ticker

We now "redefine" the "savings rate" to include paying debt, which most-certainly is not "saving" in that the very definition of "saving" is that you still have it, while paying a debt results in money that's not yours anymore.

From Walter Williams at Front Page Magazine

In 1940, only 15% of all grades awarded were A's. By 2018, the average grade point average at some of the nation's leading colleges was A-minus.

From Eric Peters at Eric Peters Autos, about electric cars

It’s hard to stay focused on the pursuit of happiness when you are required to provide for the happiness of others, at gunpoint.

From the Z Man

The much-awaited Inspector General’s report on the FBI will be a white wash, because in Cloud People land, the only real punishment is a few negative sentences in a report no one will read.

From Robert Gore at Straight Line Logic, about deep state morons

They’re too stupid or lazy to try to figure out the world they live in and aren’t going to get their first clue until the handouts stop.

From Gerard Van der Leun at American Digest

Unlike all the other older generations who criticized the younger generation, we’re right.

From Livius at History Blog

The first recorded personal name in history belonged to an accountant.

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Brioche is something between bread and pastry, being bread with extra butter and egg. Whoever said, if anyone did, "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche", didn't say "let them eat cake," they said "let them eat brioche". I've read there was a law requiring bakers to sell brioche if they ran out of bread, at the same price, so it's understandable as something other than callous disregard for the citizenry in a time of scarcity.

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From Dzershhinsky, comment at Zero Hedge

F16 45 years old

F15 47 years old

B52 67 years old

A10 Warthog 47 years old

F22 22 years old

B1 44 years old

B2 30 years old

F35 12 years old

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Antony Davies and James Harrigan explain transferism, at the Foundation for Economic Education:

These four in ten Americans, and the politicians who speak for them most vocally, are not advocating socialism at all; they are advocating what we should really call “transferism.” Transferism is a system in which one group of people forces a second group to pay for things that the people believe they, or some third group, should have. Transferism isn’t about controlling the means of production. It is about the forced redistribution of what’s produced.

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From PA World and Times, about how police are turned against the citizenry by their political masters

Someone once explained how early on during the Yellow Vests uprising, one group of riot police would block protesters on one end of the street while, unbeknownst to that squad of cops, another police unit would block them at the other end. The two units would, by design, not know about each other. Therefore, each group of cops would become frustrated with the protesters that were prevented from moving in either direction.

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From Borepatch, the difference between the temperature scales explained from a practical perspective:

Fahrenheit:

0° - You're cold.
100° - You're hot.

Celsius:

0° - You're cold.
100° - You're dead.

Kelvin:

0° - You're dead.
100° - You're dead.

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This just in from Fox News:

Horowitz released his report Monday saying his investigators found no intentional misconduct or political bias surrounding efforts to launch that 2016 probe ...

Huffington Post puts it this way:

There's no evidence that the FBI's decision to open an investigation into the Trump campaign's connections to Russia in 2016 was influenced by political bias, according to a Justice Department inspector general report released Monday that largely debunked President Donald Trump's conspiracy theories about the origins of the Russia probe.

As we say in these hills, you can't find what you're not looking for.

and finally,

Well gang, time to man the flare launchers and flip down yer flash goggles, we're going to make a low run over Modern Civilization to update ground truth here at Woodpile Report. But first, an old ad.

 

1949. General Electric magazine ad

 

The first commercially successful home refrigerator was the General Electric "Monitor-Top" introduced in 1927. The name came from its appearance, similar to the USS Monitor ironclad of the Civil War.

Separate freezer compartments became common after World War II. Designer colors followed in the 'fifties as the "institutional equipment" look slowly faded.

GE Appliances has been owned by Haier since 2016, a Chinese company headquartered in Qingdao. Hotpoint is one of several GE Appliances brands.

 

 

Remus's notebook

 

Universe Today - LIGO Will Squeeze Light To Overcome The Quantum Noise Of Empty Space ... will double its sensitivity to gravitational waves

Minnesota Sun - Minneapolis Police Receive Mandatory Training on Gender Pronouns ... "They’re not letting the guys get the training they need to do actual police work"

Breitbart - Bottom Falls Out as CNN Ratings Hit 3-Year Low ... Least Trusted Name in News fell to 18th place during primetime , less than one-fourth of one percent of the American population

The article doesn't explain what a CNN is

Zero Hedge - New ATF Study: 423 Million Guns In Hands Of Americans ... more than half of all rifles produced in 2017 were AR-15/AK-47 style

4Chan - A photo montage of the revolutionary left's shock troops.

Red State - NYC Refuses to Cooperate with Feds, Releases Illegal Gang Member Who Allegedly Killed a Man ... Feliciano Perez-Bautista was charged with manslaughter

Big League Politics - Liberals Rally on Behalf of Foreign-Born Convicted Murder Who is Set to be Deported by ICE ... they want Tyrone Abraham to be freed

The Hill - Pennsylvania lawmaker charged with stealing from nonprofit for the mentally ill ... Moslem woman , now under arrest

Excerpt: She allegedly spent the stolen cash on “vacations, designer clothing, luxury car payments, real estate purchases, past-due mortgage payments, and other personal expenses.”

National Interest - Don't Forget The Battle Of Brody (History's Biggest Tank Battle) ... in 1941 at Brody it was 2,648 Soviet tanks versus 1,000 German tanks. The actual Kursk number in 1943 was  672 Soviet tanks versus 306 German tanks.

Reason - New York City, Which Defended Its Onerous Gun Transport Restrictions As Necessary for Public Safety, Concedes They Weren't ... the city is now making representations that the reg doesn't mean what it seems to mean

Fox Washington DC - Video shows kids mob store near National Zoo, attack employees ... described as "kids, children, juveniles, teens", wink wink. No arrests.

CNN Business - A Facebook rumor about white vans is spreading fear across America ... says men driving white vans are kidnapping women all across the United States for sex trafficking and to sell their body parts

The West is sinking into depravity and self destruction. The insanity is real, but it's a symptom, not the cause.

 

Prep For That - Danish Professor Suggest Armed War Against ‘Climate Deniers’ ... climate change threatens democracy as we know it , that should mean war

Qanon - Who's related to who at Google, 23andMe, and YouTube

War History Online - Poland’s WW2 $5bn of Gold Returned From London in Top-Secret Mission ... had been holding the bars since the Second World War

TechXplore - New record set for cracking encryption keys ... a 795-bit integer, using much less computational power than had been estimated

Shooting Illustrated - Classic Guns: The M3 'Grease Gun' ... went from a concept on paper to production within just seven months

What's needed is a derivative combining the best features of the Sten Mark V and the M3A1 Grease Gun, using an existing magazine of proven reliability, optimized for "cottage industry" production.

Next Big Future - Mach Effect Propulsion Study Proved There Is No Vibration Error ... at 1g acceleration would allow crews to reach any moon or planet in our solar system in less than three weeks. Video, 1h 20m 26s

Cosmos - Clever canines recognise words, regardless of who’s speaking ... also can recognise that someone is unfamiliar by the sound of their voice alone, some of the owners couldn’t even tell the speakers apart

Long Range Weather - Global Temperature Trends From 2500 B.C. To 2040 A.D. ... the future ain't looking so hot

 

1871. Consent of the governed

 

 

Stuff you may want to think about
Synopsis with links

 

Hive mind, Z Man - The word “resist” is an important clue. When one is on attack, resist is not the word you use to describe your efforts. The word “resist” is always used in the context of defending something from an aggressor. It is this sense of being a victim, that their person has been violated by Trump, that is behind the impeachment rage. It is why any analysis of the Left in isolation tends to miss the point. Everything these people do has to be examined within the larger context of the hive mind. These are people who have no agency, because what defines them is their relations with the other nodes in the Progressive hive mind. When you deal with one, you are dealing with all of them.

 

Codevilla, American Greatness - Since 2016, the ruling class is expressing an identity that has grown and solidified over more than a half century, and that it is not capable of changing. Restoring anything like the Founders’ United States of America is out of the question. Constitutional conservatism on behalf of a country a large part of which is absorbed in revolutionary identity; that rejects the dictionary definition of words; that rejects common citizenship, is impossible. Not even winning a bloody civil war against the ruling class could accomplish such a thing. In 2016 and since, we have learned that our ruling class has amassed the power to revel in making us miserable. We have also learned we must undo or separate ourselves from them, their structures, and priorities. They regard us as illegitimate, we have no choice but to return the favor.

 

Woke, American Greatness - In the university’s zero-sum game, something was lost to provide the needed space for these therapeutic new classes. And what was tossed were precisely those traditional courses in English grammar, composition, literature, foreign languages, philosophy, and history that provided the student with the facts-based architecture central to fundamental education. Today’s students are the most unaware generation in our nation’s history, unwoken to the full dimensions of those who have channeled them into a decade or more of crushing debt, left them with unmarketable degrees, nourished both their ignorance of the world, past and present, and their political arrogance.

 

Numbers, Z Man - The Chinese tendency toward authoritarian bureaucracy was too strong for Marxism and now too strong for neo-liberalism. China today is the same place Marco Polo found seven centuries ago, just decorated with technology appropriated from the West. China is proof of the great chain of causality. Her biology and culture dictate the institutions, politics and economics. This is why fears of a ruling class dominated by people of an Oriental outlook is probably misplaced. The displacement of whites from the ruling class is just another symptom of the decline. A ruling class distrusted by and alien to the majority of the population is not going to have a long future, no matter how smart and ruthless they are as people. Numbers still matter.

 

1939. Malin Oregon

 

A potato picker camp at harvest time. Malin, a small town on the southern border of the state, had a population of about 500 in 1939, it's around 800 today. Circle C Marketing, a business to business sales outfit for ten potato producers, is the largest employer.

 

More stuff you may want to think about
Synopsis with links

 

Euro, Gold Goats 'n Guns - The euro, as a currency, was guided by German industrialists. The single exchange rate underprices the value of Northern European industrial entities while overpricing Southern Europe’s productive capacity. This has led to exactly where we are today with massive internal imbalances which have hollowed out these economies, further eroded their productive capacity and competitiveness and left them with a mountain of unpayable debt, a further means to extract the last of the country’s real wealth when the inevitable crisis hits and the debt has to be restructured. To think that this point wasn’t understood by the people who designed the euro is to be terminally naive.

 

CWII, American Thinker - When Barry descended from the heavens to lead America and the Democrats in the transformation of the nation, the left dispensed with all pretense of respect for Americans. In reality “the people” have been nothing but a disappointment to the left. Graciously, the left had given Americans the opportunity to do as they were told, and they refused, costing the Democrats the House, the Senate, and the Presidency in 2016. There will be no more trying to rally Americans around to their way of thinking. “The people,” going forward, are the enemy. They are coming for those who will not acquiesce to the left’s plans for America. All that remains is how the people will react. Normal Americans have had enough, they are going to fight.

 

Dems, James Kunstler - What is the Democratic Party today? Well, it’s the cheerleading squad for “seventeen” government agencies that add up to the craftily-labeled “intel community,” a warm-and-fuzzy coalition of snoops, false witnesses, rogue lawfare cadres, seditionists, and bad-faith artists working sedulously to hide their previous misdeeds with ever-fresh ones. They’re the party against free speech, against due process of law, the party determined to provoke war with Russia. They’re the party of sexual confusion, sexual hysteria, and sexual conflict, the party of kangaroo courts, cancel culture, erasing boundaries (including national borders), and of making up rules for all that as they go along — like the Nazis and Soviets used to do. The ideas and policies they advocate are so comprehensively crazy that their old support of slavery looks quaintly straightforward in comparison.

Kunstler says the Dems will detonate when the Barr and Durham investigations go public. Yeah, right. He says America has turned against them because they're lunatics. "The wheels are coming off," and "the walls are closing in". Horse hockey. Ask the good people of Virginia if the Democratic Party is collapsing into irrelevancy. It's like black mold, you can never get rid of it.

 

Red Guards, Campus Reform - When former ICE Acting Director Tom Homan took the stage at the University of Pennsylvania, a mob chanted and hurled insults at him. The act of intimidation was successful: the event was canceled. This is just the latest in a growing recent list of such incidents. How have these students come to embrace the brute anti-intellectualism perfected by the communist Red Guards in China to the Nazi Brownshirts alike? In the past several years, an ongoing process of the degradation of traditional academic culture in American institutions of higher learning has significantly accelerated. They are now in critical condition. The students have not invented this bizarre worldview on their own. There are professors who adhere to it as well, and they teach it to their students.

 

1942. Fort Kent, Maine

 

A wartime photo of the town's scrap drive, a recycling program for iron-steel, rubber and aluminum to provide raw material for military manufacturing. Notice the audience of little kids in the background. This photo is part of a series, some of which are posted in past issues of Woodpile Report.

Fort Kent is a town of about 4,000 in northern Maine, across the Saint John River from Quebec. Most families speak French at home. The population in 1942 was about 5,300.

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10 Dec 2019