Friday, April 24, 2026

"No entiendo"

California wants to turn highways into a real-life version of Duel (the 1971 film featuring a crazed semi driver trying to run down Dennis Weaver): "California Democrat Candidates Agree: Requiring Truck Drivers to Speak English Is Racist".

Every single Democratic Party candidate for governor strongly opposed requiring English proficiency because it is racist or something.
How, exactly, language and race are related is unnecessary to explain in a place like California, where it is just assumed that any deficiency in competence is excused by having a skin color a shade darker than Cafe au lait.

Disaster in the gun room

Well, it turned out not to be so bad, but it could have been pretty awful.

Yesterday, I was field stripping my Colt 1908 vest pocket .25 acp pistol, and I managed to let the mainspring guide rod, which was under tension, launch itself across the room, where it disappeared among a mass of shelves, boxes, small cabinets and general junk. The guide rod is very small, but a key part of the firing pin assembly. 

I plan on trying to find the piece today or tomorrow, but I think it's unlikely that I'm going to turn it up. I began looking for the part online, and was having trouble locating anybody who had one in stock, when I stumbled across Numrich Gun Parts. My heroes! They have the part (I ordered two, to be on the safe side), and went ahead and ordered a new recoil spring, too . I also ordered some new grips for my Colt .25 Automatic (successor to the Colt, Jr, and not to be confused with the 1908); they're black replacement grips, and will, in my opinion, look better than the gaudy Jay Scott grips that came with the pistol when I bought it a few years ago. The right grip cracked a few days ago and fell into two pieces when I was out at the range, and although I was able to glue the two pieces back together, I figured I'd go ahead and replace them (as I say, they're fairly gaudy things: plastic laminated onto wood, and made to look like stag grips).

Btw, I think it was friend and commenter Veeshir who first mentioned Numrich here a couple of years ago; I believe you said you lived near their warehouse at one time, didn't you V?

Gotta learn to keep your story straight, bub!

These assertions have about them the aroma of a stock pen where the cows somehow got into a case of Ex-Lax.



Happy Feet Friday

Dizzy Gillespie, joined by some very cool friends, performs "A Hand Fulla Gimme".

Featuring, in addition to Gillespie, Alice Roberts handling the vocals, Sonny Stitt on alto sax, Milt Jackson on vibraphone, Al Haig on piano, Ray Brown on bass, and Kenny Clark on drums.



Bonus!  Here's a short clip from another Dizzy Gillespie video, featuring some extremely hep flute playing by Leo Wright.

Thursday, April 23, 2026

More evidence...

 ...as if any were necessary, that leftists have strong sociopathic tendencies: "The devil wears Kagan".

Hemingway alleges that several of Kagan’s former clerks, along with others at the Court, have described her as “emotionally abusive,” “demanding, demoralizing, demeaning,” and “a hard a**.”’
‘Kagan’s clerks had fear in their eyes,’ Hemingway said someone who clerked for a different justice recounted to her.
Other former aides speculated that there is ‘something psychological going on there,’ Hemingway writes.

Generally being irreligious as regards traditional belief systems, leftists have no problem usurping the power and authority that historically has been assumed to rest with the divine. That they almost always use that power in abusive and evil ways does, indeed, suggest that there is "something psychological going on" - or perhaps something even deeper and darker.

It would look good for Republicans symbolically..

...but as a practical matter, would it ultimately make a difference? "A Republican Governor in California?"

California is practically under a Democrat lockdown when it comes to state politics and national congressional representation. Still, it would no doubt be beneficial to have a governor who adopts a policy of "first, do no harm". At a bare minimum, we should be able to look forward to a governor who does not, himself, initiate a lot of idiotic policies.

Wednesday, April 22, 2026

The Southern Poverty Law Center certainly doesn't have a problem with poverty

"800 MILLION REASONS".

Put simply, the grand jury’s indictment alleges that, over a long period of time, the SPLC and its legions of LARPing lawyers cosplayed as a law enforcement agency. It generously funded “informants” in a variety of racist hate groups —actual ones— like the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nation, and the National Alliance. In one recent example, the SPLC paid $270,000 to a notorious racist who helped plan and organize the infamous 2017 Charlottesville rally in Virginia, around which corporate media would later concoct a ridiculous “fine people” fiction to smear President Trump during his first term, and Democrats would fundraise on that lie for years.

Let a thousand Reichstag fires burn. 

H/T: Friend and commenter JeffS