ol remus and the woodpile report

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Archives

Woodpile Report does not maintain an archive. Some issues linger on the server until Remus gets around to deleting all but the previous three or four. Don't confuse Woodpile Report with a blog. It isn't. It's an olde tymme internet site made by hand and archives are a dispensable chore

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Policy

Ol' Remus offers his opinions as-is, where is. He rarely cites support for his opinions so they are, in that sense, unwarranted. He comes by them largely by having lived and watched and listened rather than by argument or persuasion. His opinions are, therefore, not particularly accessible by debate. He entertains opposing opinion but he feels no inclination, much less obligation, to discuss or defend his own. Whatever usefulness or amusement the reader may find in them is their own business.

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Regime-speak

You're about to be lied to when they say-

a hand up
a new study shows
a poll by the highly respected
a positive step
are speaking out
arguably
arsenal
at-risk communities
best practices
broader implications
collectively
commonsense solutions
comprehensive reform
cycle of poverty
cycle of violence
demand action
denier
disenfranchised
disparate impact
disproportionately
diverse backgrounds
divisive
economically disadvantaged
emerging consensus
empower
enhance
experts agree
fair share
fiscal stimulus
fully funded
give back
giving voice to
greater diversity
growing support for
hater
have issues
high capacity magazine
history shows
in denial
inappropriate
inclusive environment
insensitivity
investing in our future
linked to
making a difference
making bad choices
marginalized
mean spirited
most vulnerable
mounting opposition to
multicultural
non-blaming
nonjudgmental
non-partisan, non-profit
not value neutral
nuanced
off our streets
on some level
oppressed minorities
our nation's children
outreach
people of color (sometimes, colour)
positive outcome
potentially
progressive
public/private partnership
raising awareness
reaching out
reaffirm our commitment to
redouble our efforts
root cause
sends a message
shared values
social justice
solidarity with
speaking truth to power
stakeholders
statistics show
sustainable, sustainability
the American People
the bigger issue is
the failed ...
the larger question is
the more important question is
the reality is
the struggle for
too many
too often
touched by
underserved populations
undocumented immigrant
vibrant community
voicing concern
working families

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You know what the media's saying by not saying it when they say-

gang-related
gangbanger
mob and rob
mobbing up
pack of teens
rival gang members
roving group
students
swarm mob
teen gang
teen mob
teens
thugs
unruly crowd
urban youths
young people
young men
youth violence
youths

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Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals
Tactics of the Left

Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have

Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.

Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of the enemy.

Rule 4: Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.

Rule 5: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon

Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy.

Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag.

Rule 8: Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period.

Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself.

Rule 10: Maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.

Rule 11: If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside.

Rule 12: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.

Rule 13: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.

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Artist of the day

Twilight in the Wilderness, Frederic Church, 1860

Although there's much evidence Frederic Church's mentor, Thomas Cole, was a transcendentalist in the manner of Thoreau, Church (1826–1900) followed explorer Alexander von Humboldt's philosophy of discovering and displaying the appearance and temperament of nature with scientific fidelity. To this end, Cole traveled the Near East, the Arctic and, especially, South America. Twilight in the Wilderness is understood as an homage to his earlier Hudson River School sensibilities. It's often asserted, probably fancifully, that it expresses his forebodings of the approaching Civil War. Others note Church was a life-long master of showmanship, to our gain, his was a talent of the first water.

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The misbegotten

A legitimate government derives its authority from the consent of the governed. Notice, legitimate is different from legal. A regime can be legal yet not legitimate. The Soviet Union's rule over eastern Europe was legal but not legitimate. A legal but illegitimate regime rules, a legitimate regime governs. Legitimate regimes are a franchise granted by the people and accountable to the people. Where instead the people are held accountable to the regime, where the regime grants franchises to the people, there we find illegitimacy. Said differently, a legal but illegitimate regime is a player disguised as a referee. In Woodpile Report issue 249Remus said,

When a government loses legitimacy, or the appearance of legitimacy, with or without the substance, it's a terminal condition. Anything they say or do speeds them to the wall.

Illegitimate acts are like a fart in an elevator, it's not illegal, it's an offense of a different order, one which can't be denied, defended or undone, and there's nothing the offender can do to stop proof of his malfeasance from spreading. We sniff something offensive when a regime won't or can't balance its budget, defend its borders or declare and win its wars. Remus went on to say a regime has lost more than the appearance of legitimacy when it behaves as an occupying power,

unresponsive to the will of the populace, resting on arbitrary rule unconstrained by due process, relying instead on intimidation and use of disproportional force—home invasion in particular, networks of anonymous accusers, checkpoints and humiliating searches which can't be predicted or avoided, indefinite detention and lack of genuine avenues for redress.

Illegitimate regimes have a ruling class, but so does every legitimate regime, dating from the republic of Rome's patrician rule over the plebeians. Yes, we too have a ruling class. Yes it's membership varies by whoever is compiling the list and yes, "who is king, who is not king" drifts over time. We recognize the true nature of our ruling class when they're plainly described, as by Angelo Codevilla in his article, America's Ruling Class, at Spectator magazine:

Our ruling class recruits and renews itself not through meritocracy but rather by taking into itself people whose most prominent feature is their commitment to fit in... Its first tenet is that "we" are the best and brightest while the rest of Americans are retrograde, racist, and dysfunctional unless properly constrained... the members of our ruling class admit that they do not read the laws. They don't have to. Because modern laws are primarily grants of discretion, all anybody has to know about them is whom they empower... Laws and regulations nowadays are longer than ever because length is needed to specify how people will be treated unequally

Unlike the the Roman republic, our ruling class openly commits illegal acts, not just openly but serially and proudly. It draws attention to them, its elected members campaign on them. This is apart from run-of-the mill-corruption. Such acts are mostly seen by the citizenry as sorta-kinda legal if not rigorously defensible. The appeal seems always to renormalization as defined by the beneficiary, Affirmative Action and other balms for self-selected victims for instance, or they're payoffs to satisfy similar improbable theories of retroactive justice, the redistribution of GM's assets to the labor unions for instance, or they facilitate an imagined notion of a greater good, liar loan guarantees for instance, or they're so narrow the general populace is materially unaffected by them, or is ignorant of them, generally by choice, or so arcane their import can't be known by persons of ordinary intelligence. Such dubious excursions are never temporary, they now comprise a large part of the body of law.

The cost to the citizenry is like the old-timer's lament, the really expensive repairs to his car are for things that weren't even on his car when he started driving. Nor is much of them optional, we can't refuse the black boxes that record our supposed noncompliances and report them to law enforcement, for instance. Consider: we have the right to confront our accusers. This doesn't mean confronting law enforcement itself, much less devices of their design, under their control and subject to their interpretation. Convoluted outrages are not more legitimate for being convoluted. The 19th century thinker Lysander Spooner argued that the 'social contract' notion of government is bogus when government force is used against one of the parties. The 'party' being forced is the people in this case, the paying customer via the automobile manufacturer, who is further coerced into keeping self-reporting gadgets in good working order. Stalin's NKVD used to send the family a bill for the cartridge used to execute one of its members. Same principle.

So far we've seen legalities and illegalities with shadings of illegitimacy. So far. But it gets worse. This regime has gone beyond such malfeasance. With the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012our putative representatives have enabled the president to place any citizen or any group of citizens beyond the law and summarily imprison or execute them, a prerogative common to criminal enterprises and tyrannies everywhere. Self-conferred license to terrorize the populace without due process, or trial, or future accountability is both illegal and illegitimate; illegal under the Constitution—Section 9, Article 1 which deals with Bills of Attainder and the Writ of Habeas Corpus—there being no rebellion or invasion as required, and illegitimate because the governed do not consent and accountability to them is omitted by intent.

How is this not the voiding of the Constitution and its bedrock principles? How is this not a knowing and calculated betrayal of the citizenry? It has the features of rule by divine right, of sovereign and subject, of a return to feudalism, of rule by law rather than of law, of privilege without responsibility and without accountability to the people.

It's right about here where we expect to hear an appeal to vote the rascals out but as Mark Twain said, if elections changed anything they'd be made illegal. A regime consists only partly of elected office holders, and it may well be the least part. The ongoing regime, the real government, lives in its departments, bureaus and agencies. It's here we find unchecked power and a craving for growth without limit, serial emergencies, enabling acts and de facto bills of attainder, unaccountability and high legal walls for protection from the consequences of their actions.

Addendum: Martial law (legal term: State of National Emergency)

Background: US Constitution, Section 9, Article 1 (in part): The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpusshall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it, and, No Bill of Attainderor ex post facto Law shall be passed.

1861 State of National Emergency, American Civil War, Writ of Habeas Corpus suspended, fiat currency mandated, &c.

1939 to 1952 State of National Emergency, World War II

1976 National Emergencies Act - two year limit set on National Emergencies unless the president extends them

1977 State of National Emergency, International Emergency Economic Powers Act

1979 State of National Emergency, Iran Hostage incident

1995 State of National Emergency, Iran

1998 State of National Emergency expanded to target designated terrorists

2001 State of National Emergency, attack of September 11

2008 State of National Emergency, Terrorist targeting expansion extended

2009 State of National emergency of 2001 extended

2010 State of National Emergency of 2001 extended

2012 National Defense Authorization Act, Writ of Habeas Corpus suspended; authorizes military prosecution with indefinite detention, rendition and interrogation. Also contains Bill of Attainder-like language: 'terrorist' defined as anyone who assists or commits a "belligerent act" against the U.S. No expiration, see 1976, above.

Duffy Cobblesworth

Cousin Ezekiel has Chapter of of his new tale for you, Duffy Cobblesworth, posted at Stories from outten the hills

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Remus's new-fangled camera

Well, the Nikon digital ain't no Argus C3 but it does a decent job if y'point it just right. These two are from Sunday.

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Technical analysis yields alarming results
End of civilization indicated to a sigma six probability

After checking out the Baltic Dry indexchart over at Mr. Bloomberg's site and being suitably impressed, Remus got to wondering how many alarming charts have appeared in yer ol' Woodpile Report. Surely he must have charted it somewhere. Well, one thing led to another and Remus came up with his own scarey chart. Notice the many standard deviations of um, deviation. Notice the crisp hockey-stick configuration, they's all the rage y'know. Remus will not be outdone by Baltic no-accounts, 'sides, they's had it their own way long enough.

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art-stuff-you-may-want-to-think

DHS has given written permission to collect and retain personal information from news anchors, journalists, reporters or anyone who may use "traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed..." New provisions in the National Operations Center's write-up means that any reporter, whether someone along the lines of Walter Cronkite or a budding blogger, can be victimized by the agency, says this article, Homeland Security monitors journalists, at the Russian Times.

Here's a new security device that can be installed in nearly any notebook computer to protect its data from prying eyes—Digisafe DiskCrypt, a hard-disk enclosure that turns any 1.8-inch micro-SATA device into removable and fully encrypted storage. The enclosure, which is the size of a 2.5" drive, can be used as a drop-in replacement for existing drives, says Sean Gallagher in this article at Ars Technica.

Water Filtration Facts and Fiction–Part I of II, by Kellene Bishop at Preparedness Pro. When Miss Kellene speaks, Remus listens and listens close.

Literary offenses - So peeved was Twain by critics' acclaim of James Fenimore Cooper's The Deerslayer that he unpacked it with meticulous, delightfully spiteful attention to distasteful detail, his fury culminating in one passage where "in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115." Maria Popova gives us Twain's 1895 list of 18 don'ts in her article, 18 Rants by Mark Twain About Bad Writing, at Brain Pickings.

The ten most dangerous cities in the world in 2011, and why, by Nataly at Urban Titan.

Photographing the police - When you consider measures like SOPA, that giving the government increased power over internet posts and increased ability to seek out user information may not just impact talking about music and movies — it might impact our ability to talk about, and document, police misconduct. Think the police would never seek to abuse such power? Then you're a damned fool, says Ken in this article, Excessive Force Is Dangerous—To View on YouTube, at POPEHAT.

Physicians in India have identified a form of incurable tuberculosis there, raising further concerns over increasing drug resistance to the disease... drug-resistant varieties might best be understood as resulting from poor treatment. According to a 2011 WHO report, fewer than 5% of newly diagnosed or previously treated patients are tested for drug resistance. And it is estimated that just 16% of patients with drug-resistant TB are receiving appropriate treatment, says Katherine Rowland in this article, Totally drug-resistant TB emerges in India, at Nature.

Also see, UN Soldiers Brought Deadly Superbug to Americas, at ABC News.

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.95 caliber centerfire rifle

Put aside your girly-man .458 Win Mag or your wimpy .50 cal and watch guys shoot a real gun, the largest center fire rifle ever made, the .950 JDJ by SSK Industries. Only three were ever made. This was the lightest, the carbine version, weighing in at 50 lbs. It shoots a .95 caliber 2,400 grain bullet at 2,100 fps using 240 grains of powder, which generates 25,400 f/lbs of muzzle energy and 277 f/lbs of recoil energy. Each round costs $40.

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art-overheard

What set a corporation apart from lesser business enterprises, such as textile mills, were the enormous amount of capital and the complexity of management that corporations required. Those that built and operated transcontinental railroads shared a third trait as well: a near-absolute dependence on Washington. The federal government not only made available the vast swaths of land through which the transcontinentals would travel, it also supplied much of the capital that financed their construction and operation.
Mark Hertsgaard, theamericanscholar.org

We've been calling it the Milky Way, but the true color of our galaxy has actually been unknown. Now, a team of scientists has determined more precisely that our star system is indeed white.
Elizabeth Landau, cnn.com

To a visitor from 1950, the physical transformation of the citizenry would be the most significant fact about America in 2011, and one far more startling than the Xbox. He would look at the childlike clothing and wonder what it said about the overall cultural sensibility... All of which is to say that my pessimistic pals on the right who warn that the United States is in for a grim future as a large Greece are being hopeless Pollyannas. America rarely does things by half, and there's no reason to believe societal decay would be an exception to that rule.
Mark Steyn, steynonline.com

Third world immigration - When was the last time any of you sat in traffic and thought to yourselves, "We need more people here."
dolph9, comment, zerohedge.com

Snuff film urban legend - It is safe to say that anybody who has seen Snuff knows how ludicrous these claims are, at least with respect to this specific production. Not only is the gore obviously fake, but the execution of the special effects is painfully inept. Snuff is nothing more than a grand marketing scheme that made a shameless little splatter film into one of the most profitable-and notorious-films ever conceived. The clever ad campaign was obviously tongue-in-cheek, but somehow millions of theater-goers were snagged by the notion "But what if it is real?"
Scott Stine, csicop.org

At the current rate of degradation in NYSE total trading volume - from post US downgrade to now, Birinyi's Ruler implies volume will entirely disappear by December 11th 2012.
Tyler Durden, zerohedge.com

If we scrape away the rhetoric and bogus statistics, at heart the current fantasy that the U.S. has "decoupled" from the global economy and will remain an island of "permanent prosperity" in a sea of recession boils down to this belief: ... it's within the power of the Central State to make good every loss, guarantee every debt, maintain the Empire, solve every geopolitical challenge and find technological or military solutions to potential energy shortages... A people conditioned to this expectation will have great difficulty accepting that their government has already done everything possible, and that these stupendous debt-based expenditures are simply not sustainable..
Charles Smith, oftwominds.com, via zerohedge.com

About the Grand Central Station NDAA protester arrests - While New York authorities will attempt to argue property loopholes in free speech protections for Grand Central, or national security because of the vulnerability of the terminal, really, this has nothing to do with either. This is about the removal of American voices from a room, and nothing more. If the message is going to be suppressed by the mainstream media, and shrugged off by representatives, then protesters must go to where the people are, and make the truth heard by whatever means necessary.
Brad Smith, alt-market.com

Sears-KMart nudges toward default - Sears Holdings Corp. suffered another setback when a large lender said it would no longer finance loans to suppliers awaiting payment from the company.
Miguel Bustillo, wsj.com

Yakima Valley and much of Central Washington fault zone - Every one of those mountains has a fault or two associated with them, and almost all of them haven't had much work done on them yet (sic). It's something that's going to take a long time to figure out. I view this as something I'll be working on the rest of my career.
Brian Sherrod USGS, via Mike Faulk at yakima-herald.com

45 years later - We spend more than $7 billion providing Head Start to nearly 1 million children each year. And finally there is indisputable evidence about the program's effectiveness, provided by the Department of Health and Human Services: Head Start simply does not work... Head Start graduates performed about the same as students of similar income and social status who were not part of the program. These results were so shocking that the HHS team sat on them for several years.
Joe Klein, time.com

George Lucas on his self-financed Red Tails feature movie - I realize that by accident I've now put the black film community at risk. I'm saying, if this doesn't work, there's a good chance you'll stay where you are for quite a while. It'll be harder for you guys to break out of that mold.
George Lucas, to Marco della Cava at usatoday.com

There's one mistake that the people probably won't forgive when it comes to news organizations this time—the shopworn claim that "nobody could have seen it coming." On the contrary—the so-called "alternative media" saw it coming both last time and this time around, and we've been warning of it.
Karl Denninger, market-ticker.org

NS,S - The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's command center routinely monitors dozens of popular websites, including Facebook, Twitter, Hulu, WikiLeaks and news and gossip sites including the Huffington Post and Drudge Report, according to a government document.
Mark Hosenball, reuters.com, cited at The Drudge Report

American Airlines we can live without, but not this - Twinkies manufacturer Hostess Brands filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection January 11th. Twinkies first went on sale in 1930 with banana flavored filling. Hostess also makes Ding Dongs and Ho Ho. This is a repeat performance, Hostess first went bankrupt three years ago.
Various news and other sources

As recently as the early 1980s, Haiti was producing just about all of its own rice. Now more than 60 percent is imported from the US, making it the fourth largest recipient of American rice exports in the world. That was before the quake... There is perhaps some bitter irony here that the subsidies were promoted in large part by President Clinton to help his home state of Arkansas, the largest rice producing state in the US.
Donovan Webster, globalpost.com via huffingtonpost.com

Most inventors and engineers I've met are like me, they live in their heads. They're almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone. I'm going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone. Not on a committee. Not on a team.
Steve Wozniak, Apple Computer, via Susan Cain, nytimes.com

Cunard Lines's four-funnel Grand Old Lady - The time may arrive in the passing of the centuries when the art of shipbuilding will have become forgotten. Our descendents may wonder, as we today marvel at the pyramids, how men could possibly launch – let alone build – such a mammoth vessel as the Aquitania [1913-1950]. Perhaps somewhere in a library or museum, there may hereafter be preserved a picture of this ship with some details as to her size. And they will ask themselves how mere human beings of flesh and blood could create such a wonder of engineering.
E.Chatterton, 1913, via markchirnside.co.uk

What's in a name - In 1933 Japanese camera maker Seiki Kogaku Kogio introduced a 35mm camera called the Kwanon, after a Buddhist goddess. The lens was made by Nippon Kogaku. Seiki Kogaku Kogio westernized the name to Canon (Greek, "measuring standard"), and Nippon Kogaku used Nikon, from the first syllables of its corporate name, and perhaps because it was phoenetically close to Zeiss's Ikon, whose Contax camera they copied. Happily, Nikko—as in Nikon's Nikkor lens designation—is "sunlight" in Japanese. Canon and Nikon are rivals to this day.
Ol' Remus, woodpilereport.com

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Commerce during the Great Depression

Or lack thereof.

Book store, Washington DC, 1937

Plentywood Montana, 1937

Plentywood is a town of 1,700 in the northeast corner of Montana. The average temperature in January is 9°F which fits Remus's idea of no temperature at all.

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