Placing These Down, Here

And a bonus:

JWST On Station

The Webb Telescope is in its L2 orbit and the mirror segments are fully deployed. It's cooling down.

This is an amazing achievement. There was so much that could have gone wrong and, as far as we know, none of it happened.

Going Old School; Gun Ed.

Nearly four years ago, I picked up a S&W 686.

I recently bought a set of magna grips from Midway and a grip adapter from Robertson's Trading Post.

First off, I think it looks better. It feels right, too. Second, with carrying it concealed, wood grips are less likely to grab clothing and "print".

Truth in Comics

Yesterday's Pearls Before Swine.

Go take a gander.

Another Million Moron March

One of them was a public idiot, RFK, Jr., who apparently thinks that Jews were more free under Nazi rule than Americans are today.

"Even in Hitler Germany (sic), you could, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic, like Anne Frank did," said Kennedy, a prominent anti-vaccine advocate, in a speech at the Lincoln Memorial. "I visited, in 1962, East Germany with my father and met people who had climbed the wall and escaped, so it was possible. Many died, true, but it was possible."

There is no reasonable explanation for such a comment other than some form of brain damage.

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

Tu-134:

The Media Needs a 12-Step Program to Address Its Addiction to the Petitio Story

The FBI on Friday released new details in the investigation of Gabby Petito's death, saying that that [sic] Brian Laundrie wrote in a notebook that he killed her.

The FBI's Denver office had sent out a timeline of the investigation, saying that before discovering Laundrie's remains in a Florida wetland in October, agents had discovered a backpack, a gun and a notebook that all belonged to him.

C'mon, you dumb ass-clowns, let this one go! The perp beat and choked his girlfriend to death nearly five months ago and offed himself a month or so later. Why do you keep dredging this story up? Indian women disappear and are murdered without a single peep out of ABC news and the rest of the press, who only get interested when the victim is a pretty, young, white, blonde chick.

Caturday

Can't we all just get along?

Start Soaking the Maskholes

An American Airlines flight to London returned to Miami after a passenger refused to follow the federal requirement to wear a face mask, according to the airline.

American Airlines should send the passenger a bill. Two hours of 777 flight time works out to somewhere around $60,000. Loading and unloading the airplane of baggage, guesstimate is six people for an hour's work... figure that at $300, maybe a little more. $50 per passenger to rebook them would be maybe $6,000. If the airline had to put up any passengers overnight, add that in. So maybe $70,000 or more.

If she doesn't pay, then sue her and ask for punitive damages due to her outrageous conduct. For it was outrageous. She probably believed that once the flight was an hour out or so, she could take off her mask and that they'd have no choice but to fly on. She bet poorly.

And then get all of the other passengers to assemble their costs and they could form a class-action and sue her for their additional costs.

Plus, there are the Federal charges of interfering with a flight and failing to obey the instructions of a flight crew, which might be good foor a little bit of a staycation in the Greybar Hotel.

Because It's Friday

Strasburg RR #90

What's Happening in TX?

The FBI was on the scene Wednesday near the Laredo home of U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar for what authorities described as a court-authorized ongoing investigation.

FBI spokesperson Rosanne Hughes confirmed law enforcement’s presence in the area but did not clarify what authorities were investigating.

Hughes said in a statement that the FBI was present on two streets around Cuellar’s house in Laredo “conducting court-authorized law enforcement activity.”
...
Agents were seen taking cases and other items from the congressman’s home, according to MyRGVNews. FBI officials were also present at a downtown building owned by Cuellar that reportedly houses his campaign office as well as other private businesses, according to KGNS News.

One quibble: "Court-authorized law enforcement activity" is bullshit-speak for "executing a search warrant". The Supremes have not so trashed the Fourth Amendment that the FBI can sign its own search warrants.

Nobody Should Be Surprised By This

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is drawing criticism for comments he made shortly before the GOP blocked a federal elections bill, when he said that “African American” voters cast ballots at similar rates to “Americans.”

That's just standard WASP bullshit that has been going on since 1619. Mad Magazine nailed it over fifty years ago:

Beware the Super Patriot who loves his country while hating 93% of the people who live in it.

- Mad Magazine, 1968 pic.twitter.com/0o1S2I4dkT

— Doctor Roshan R 🌍 (@pythoroshan) October 31, 2018

Putting These Down, Here

An Epic Rant on the New and Improved High Power

You will never be a real FN Hi-power Mark III. You have no parts compatibility, you have no magazine compatibility, you have a full-length guiderod. You are an FN DAC twisted by minor aesthetic tweaks and the removal of double-action into a crude mockery of John Moses Browning and Dieudonne Saive’s perfection.

All the “reviews” you get are only for clickfarming. Behind your back people mock you. Your parent company is disgusted and ashamed of you, your “userbase” laugh at your ghoulish appearance behind closed doors.

Shooters are utterly repulsed by you. The over 80 year service record of the Hi-power has allowed men to sniff out cheap clones with incredible efficiency. Even clones which “pass” look uncanny and unnatural to a man. Your side profile is a dead giveaway. And even if you manage to get a drunk guy to buy you, he’ll go straight back to the local gun store and put you up for consignment the second he gets a whiff of your extraction issues.

You will never be competitive. Your shills wrench out a fake video with plenty of slow-mo every single week and say you're "just as good", but deep inside you feel the higher bore axis and inferior ergonomics creeping up like a weed, ready to crush you under the unbearable weight.

Eventually it’ll be too much to bear - you’ll be carelessly left in the glovebox of a 1998 Ford Escort, and be crushed along with the car when it's inevitably abandoned at the tow yard. Your manufacturer will discontinue you, disappointed at the lack of sales but relieved that they no longer have to have such an unfaithful "clone" in their lineup. They’ll put you in the discontinued section of the website mentioning the DAC you were an inferior version of, and every enthusiast for the rest of eternity will know a DAC is buried there. Your frame will rust and go back to the dust, and all that will remain of your legacy is a dust cover that is unmistakably generic.

This is your fate. This is what you chose. There is no turning back.

I'd lead off with "a real FN High Power Mk.IV", but the rest is spott on. I'd not heard of any extraction issues,but the gun's really not out in the wild, yet.

She Chose Poorly

Hana Horka, a Czech singer, deliberately contracted Covid so she wouldn't have to be vaccinated. She died of Covid.

T**** Is, Once Again, The Biggest Loser in Court

In a rebuff to former President Donald Trump, the Supreme Court is allowing the release of presidential documents sought by the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The justices on Wednesday rejected a bid by Trump to withhold the documents from the committee until the issue is finally resolved by the courts. Trump’s lawyers had hoped to prolong the court fight and keep the documents on hold.

Following the high court’s action, there is no legal impediment to turning over the documents, which are held by the National Archives and Records Administration. They include presidential diaries, visitor logs, speech drafts and handwritten notes dealing with Jan. 6 from the files of former chief of staff Mark Meadows.

8-1 vote, including all of "his" justices. The King of Bone Spurs must be feeling very betrayed. The only vote for Trump was by Justice Thomas, who seems to still be working off his butthurt from his confirmation hearings.

Meanwhile, Eric Trump seems to believe that saying more than his name puts him at risk, for he invoked the Fifth Amendment 500 times in a deposition. Back in the day, conservatives would scream that anyone who repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment had to be a really bad criminal, even a mobster. What they claimed was that anyone who had so much to hide must be guilty.

Bet that they've since changed their tune.

Ayup

pic.twitter.com/UBTHmRkH0z

— mike luckovich (@mluckovichajc) January 18, 2022

Budget High Power

Girsan MC P35, imported by EAA:

One quibble with the video: The magazines of (classic) Browning High Powers do not normally drop out because the magazine safety squeezes the magazine against the back of the magazine well. That's why the "mousetrap magazine" was invented, which has a little spring to eject the magazine (as indicated by the red arrow):

At $400 a copy (1/3rd the cost of FN's new non-clone), I'm interested.

On the other hand, RUMINT has been that EAA's customer service is orders of magnitude worse than Taurus's. If you buy one and it doesn't work, you might have to fix it yourself.

With a Few Minor Alterations, This Fits Putin Like a Bespoke Suit

“There must be no doubt about one thing. Political separation from [Russia] may not lead to deprivation of rights—that is, the general rights of self-determination. In the long run it is unbearable for a world power to know there are [ethnic] comrades at its side who are constantly being afflicted with the severest suffering for their sympathy or unity with the whole nation, its destiny, and its [worldview]. To the interests of the [Russian Federation] belong the protection of those [Russian] peoples who are not in a position to secure along our frontiers their political and spiritual freedom by their own efforts.”

I don't need to tell you who spoke the original version of those words, do I?

As a Jew, I Endorse This Opinon

Because nobody can pronounce "The Protocols of the Elders of Lllwgyddywwglch". https://t.co/9glTzHwOdU

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) January 16, 2022

(H/T)

FN's New (and Improved) High Power

FN is introducing a "reborn" High Power.

What I see:

• The barrel looks like something out of a Glock. So it locks up on the ejection port (like a Glock) and not into matching cuts in the slide (like the 1911 and the P35).
• 17 round magazines so all of the "legacy" P35 magazines won't fit.
• No magazine disconnect.
• No provision for red-dot optics.
• Separate takedown lever.
• Ambidextrous controls.

It short, it looks like a P35 on the outside, but that's about as far as it goes. Because older magazines apparently will not run in this new gun, I'll just wait to see if Springfield can get the bugs out of their clone.

Especially when I consider that this gun has a MSRP of nearly twice that of the Springfield SA-35.

Covid Testing

The free Covid test site is live on a soft open. It's super easy.

Laying These Down, Here

This and other regularly-scheduled features may be suspended due to an overlap of the Venn circles for "coffee" and "laptop".

We Shall See, MLK Ed.

I don't know about you, but I'm really looking forward to the manifold tweets and messages today from white Trump-voting Republicans praising equality and justice for all, touting civil rights and love of democracy, and telling us what Martin Luther King REALLY meant.

— Stonekettle (@Stonekettle) January 17, 2022

He was right, the very same clowns trying to make it harder for people to vote posted this:

Today we honor the incredible life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. pic.twitter.com/4wnfhaUyQi

— GOP (@GOP) January 17, 2022

I think most of them will try to ignore the day, if not silently cheer on the clown that did this:

https://t.co/oo5Zw8gwKw. And on the eve of MLK day no less. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

— thefieldnegro (@fieldnegro) January 17, 2022

MLK, Jr. Day

Nothing has changed in that regard.

(H/T)

Crazy People With Nuclear Weapons, USSR Russian Ed.

“From the beginning of the year we will have in our arsenal a new sea-based missile, a hypersonic one,” Mr. Putin said, referring to a weapon that travels at more than five times the speed of sound and could likely evade existing missile defenses.

In an apparent reference to the American capital, he added: “The flight time to reach those who give the orders will also be five minutes.”

That is the talk of a crazy person, a lunatic who just happens to be the Russian leader, a man who, unlike the leaders of the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s, has no experience in a major war.

Is there a single shred of doubt what the response would be if a missile from a Russian submarine nuked Washington? To even play at saying such things shows a deep irresponsibility unbecoming the leader of any nation that has a military that is larger than Costa Rica's, let alone a significant, if fading, nuclear power.

"Fading" may be what's going on. Russia, as a nation, is fading. It is losing population. The global shift toward renewable energy sources threatens to limit Russia's economic influence. Putin's shenanigans may be a evidence of the thrashing throes of a nation that he knowss full well is sliding into irrelevance. Militaristic nations, like dangerous animals, are most dangerous when they are dying.

I grew up in the shadow of a possible global nuclear war. It appears that Generation Alpha will have that same experience.

Your Sunday Morning Prop Noise

P-40 Warhawk: