Received from CheaperThanDirt.com recently:
File this under “Why You Should Proofread Your Ads Before Sending”
That, or else Savage is expanding their 110 line:
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Bring Him Over
I see that a bunch of Brit pantywaist MPs are shocked — shocked! — that celebrity rightwinger Tommy Robinson wants to come over to the U.S. and they’re doing something about it:
Robinson, a founder and former member of the far-Right group the English Defence League, has been invited to speak at an event in Washington later this month.
He is understood to be waiting for authorisation under the U.S.’s ESTA system before embarking on the trip, which opponents fear could open up new sources of funding for his campaigns.
A cross-party group of MPs has now written to the Trump’s administration’s Mike Pompeo, head of the U.S. State department, insisting Robinson should not be allowed to use the trip to ‘promote his violent and extremist agenda’.
Once again, stupid fucking Brit politicians demonstrate that they know nothing about our political system. You see [he explained patiently] we have this thing called the “First Amendment” to our Constitution which explains quite clearly that if someone wants to suggest that allowing hordes of radical Muslim assholes into a country is not A Good Thing, then he can go right ahead and say it.
In fact, if Pompeo accedes to their pathetic little complaint, I would suggest that he needs a kick in the balls and should be given some remedial study of said Constitution. (I can’t imagine that he would even listen to these morons let alone stop Robinson from coming in, but stranger things have happened.)
I can’t get up to D.C. to see Robinson in action, but I await the inevitable video of his speech with bated breath. (I bet it turns out to be quite innocuous, in American terms anyway.)
Fucking Brit politicians are all a bunch of timorous neo-totalitarians, regardless of party — and if Pompeo is going to ban anyone from coming over here, it should be these fifty MPs, for attempting to stifle freedom of speech. Now that I’d get behind.
Gentle Reminder
Just in case anyone has forgotten (and shame on you if you did), this coming Monday November 19th will be National Ammo Day — which, given the upcoming transfer of Congressional power to the Socialist Party, makes Ammo Day’s rationale all the more meaningful.
For those who’ve been living on the Planet Manhattan and didn’t get the word, the principle is simple:
Buy one hundred (100) rounds of ammunition or more on November 19th. Corollary: if you eschew factory ammo and roll your own, then buy sufficient powder, primers, casings and bullets to create more ammo — the quantity is up to you — OR buy a brick (500 rounds) or more of .22LR.
That’s it.
The goal of Ammo Day is quite simple: to put a billion additional rounds of ammunition into civilian ownership on a single day.
Make your plans accordingly.
One Hundred Years On
At 11.00am on this day in 1918, the guns at last fell silent.
Of course, the armistice came too late for millions upon millions.
For the Fallen by Robert Laurence Binyon
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.
Sacrificing All For Beauty
Back in the early 1990s, there were essentially three “production” sports cars vying for the title of “fastest”: the Ferrari F40 with a 2.9-liter V8 engine, the Porsche 959 with a 2.8-liter flat-6, and the Jaguar XJ220 with a 3.5-liter V6, all three featuring twin turbos. While all were nominally production models, only a couple-three hundred of each were ever made because they were designed specifically to compete at Le Mans in the then-Group B class. To just about everyone’s surprise, the car with the highest straight-line speed was the Jag, at 217mph.
But that’s not what I want to talk about today.
As always in posts of this type, the thing is pointless without pictures, so here we go, in order:
All three are beautiful by the standards of the time: the F40 because Ferrari; the Porsche despite being a Porsche (I actually think the 959 was the nicest-looking Porsche ever made until the Cayman); and the XJ220 was gorgeous even in a marque which had always made beautiful cars (XK120, E-type, etc.).
All three are crap to drive — the F40 has a spartan, ugly interior with a hideously-stiff clutch and gearbox, the 959 was also a handful (although the toughest of the three: in 1986 the 959 entries finished 1st and 2nd in the Dakar Rally), and as for the XJ220, let me quote one of the reviews of the time:
The testers liked the “sheer blistering pace, looks and a superb cabin” but its size, the doors not opening far enough and handling were criticised: “If there’s a more evil device on our roads, I wouldn’t like to find it, for the XJ220 suffers from immense initial understeer followed by violent and snappy pendulous oversteer.” Most disappointing was the engine; at idle it sounded “like someone’s clanking a bucket of rusty nails together”.
However, given that these beauties were never intended to be “passenger” cars, all the above can possibly be forgiven.
The last pic, that of the XJ220, is a special one. I took it at the Salon Privé at Blenheim Palace over a year ago (full report here and here), and I have to tell you, with all of the automotive beauty on display that day, the XJ220 quite simply took my breath away. It looked like a jaguar [sic] : feral, sleek and dangerous, and even in repose, it seemed to be begging someone to drive it really, really fast. I’d never seen one in the flesh before, unlike the other cars listed above — and good grief, my carlust was almost ungovernable that day.
I suspect that others may feel the same way, not necessarily about the XJ220 but about the other two, or others. So, Gentle Readers and fellow Gear Knobs: which cars make you forget how terrible they may be to drive simply because they’re so beautiful?
Responses in Comments (or by email, if you prefer). I’ll make the best three suggestions the subject of next Saturday’s post, and add pictures if necessary.
Gratuitous Gun Pic: Colt Combat Commander (.45 ACP)
Here’s the gun with which I learned to shoot the .45 ACP cartridge: the Colt Combat Commander Model 70:
Now I’ve said a lot of bad things about Colt (the company) before, but I have to tell you, my Commander was an absolute joy to shoot, and I never had to do anything to improve it. What’s more, it loaded, fired and ejected every possible type of .45 ACP I ever put into it, and within the confines of the shorter 4” barrel, it was as accurate as I could shoot it — which, I have to tell you, wasn’t saying much. In those days, I had no patience, and every handgun shooting session seemed to involve shooting a box of ammo as quickly as possible, then heading off to the rifle range lanes to do the serious stuff, i.e. trying to get five rounds of .308 through a single hole with my Israeli Mauser.
It seemed pointless to me to spend a lot of time at the range trying to coax tiny groups out of a 4” barrel, when most self-defense situations involve distances of less than seven yards and shooting fewer than five rounds — when pin-point accuracy is largely irrelevant, really, as long as all the holes are in a sideplate-sized hole in the center of the target.
But to return to the old days: after shooting off my first thousand rounds of .45 ACP, I could handle the Commander in my sleep, and saw no reason to spend more time than I needed “to keep my eye in”. Ah, the silliness of youth…
To a certain degree, I still have some of that cavalier attitude towards large-caliber handgun shooting, and most especially with a carry gun. Now, though, that’s confined to my backup S&W 637; the 1911, however, always gets a thorough workout.
And here’s the scoop: the smaller 1911 frames like the Combat Commander are a perfect compromise between stopping-power and concealability — for a man. I think that women need something which either tames recoil better (i.e. a larger-frame pistol) or else should shoot a cartridge which has less recoil to start off with. Or both. Like this shiny Combat Commander in 9mm:
And yes, I know there are women who compete in IPSC and all that jive, using full-frame 1911s to shoot .45 ACP. (David also killed Goliath — but that’s not the way to bet.) The stainless Commander fits every bill for the ladies, I think.
As for me: would I use a Commander for my carry piece nowadays? In a heartbeat.