[Breitbart] On Friday, the government of gun-controlled Australia admitted that hundreds of thousands of "illegal firearms" remain in criminal possession and launched a new amnesty in hopes of persuading said criminals to turn over the weapons.
In September, Breitbart News reported that Melbourne, Australia, had a gun problem; that they had witnessed more than one shooting a week on average since January 2015.
Moreover, The Age reported:
Known criminals were caught with firearms 755 times [in 2015], compared to 143 times in 2011.
The epicentre of the problem is a triangle between Coolaroo, Campbellfield and Glenroy in the north-west, with Cranbourne, Narre Warren and Dandenong in the south-east close behind
Criminals are u sing gunshot wounds to the arms and legs as warnings to pay debts Assault rifles and handguns are being smuggled into Australia via shipments of electronics and metal parts Now the government of Australia is admitting that hundreds of thousands of "illegal guns" - "illicit firearms" - in the hands of criminals some 20 years after Australia's gun ban was implemented.
#1
true but australia having gun control laws is NO argument for trying to disarm the USA
they are 2 different cases
Australia has tough gun laws but it's OK it works because most of the population don't own guns. Some criminals have illegal firearms but not many and if caught they are taken forever out of the market
People that own guns have to keep them in locked gun safes.
But it works here because we never had widespread gun ownership.
So lots of people in Australia foolishly think they know best and that they can tell the US what to do - but the US is a whole different country.
The US has widespread gun ownership and the second amendment which is constitutionally important.
so that means you can't bring in gun control laws in the same way
and if you try that in the US all that will happen is law abiding folk will give up their guns while criminals will have all the guns
So it just wouldn't work.
But this is why there is a cultural difference between the two countries. If you walk down any street in australia and ask if people should be able to own guns most people will say "no".
If you do the same in the US most people will say "yes".
Australia has a lot worse problems - like NO constitutional guarantee of free speech
#6
I view the 1st and 2nd Amendments more as warnings than guarantees.
The guarantees are what people do to ensure their rights are respected by government, including keeping and bearing arms, even in the face of admonitions that gun rights are "gone" when a political operative of any kind gets into office.
I called this Oz thing a year ago, pointing out that the Australian gun laws -- laws up until now which were regarded by opponents of the right to keep and bear arms as a model for "what should be done" in the US -- were universally ignored, and were therefore a massive failure and a waste of government resources.
The announcement by the elected government of Australia only confirmed what I have been contending for a while now.
Another example which should have taken the breath away of every gun grabbing fascist: New York state had a registration rate of five percent of semiautomatic rifles since their Draconian gun laws were passed in 2013.
[Reuters] - The dramatic shift to online shopping that has crushed U.S. department stores in recent years now threatens the investors who a decade ago funded the vast expanse of brick and mortar emporiums that many Americans no longer visit.
Weak September core retail sales, which strip out auto and gasoline sales, provide a window into the pain the holders of mall debt face in coming months as retailers with a physical presence keep discounting to stave off lagging sales.
Some $128 billion of commercial real estate loans - more than one-quarter of which went to finance malls a decade ago - are due to refinance between now and the end of 2017, according to Morningstar Credit Ratings.
Wells Fargo estimates that about $38 billion of these loans were taken out by retailers, bundled into commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) and sold to institutional investors.
Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and other underwriters now reckon about half of all CMBS maturing in 2017 could struggle to get financing on current terms. Commercial mortgage debt often only pays off the interest and the principal must be refinanced.
The blame lies with online shopping and widespread discounting, which have shrunk profit margins and increased store closures, such as Aeropostale's bankruptcy filing in May, making it harder for mall operators to meet their debt obligations.
#3
Online shopping dooms brick and mortar stores/malls
Who wouldn't be in the position they are if they hadn't used the phrases "It's out of stock" and "We can order that for you" way too often. It all evolved to 'cutting out the middle man'.
It's the impact upon an economy in which their businesses were gatekeeper when the number of households with (analog) phones was much lower and the cost of long distance was incredible high by today's standards. Also tie that with technological expansion driving the costs down in transportation and delivery (anyone remember Railroad Express and USPS Special Delivery?).
#4
IIRC, the USA has vastly overbuilt brick & mortar retail facilities, much like the housing bubble. The cheap money / ZIRP has encouraged wasteful investment in a doomed industry.
#7
Back when, I could order what I needed from the Sears catalogue. Pre-internet times. I would get what I ordered within a reasonable amount of time, and on occasion they would send the next better model if what was ordered was out of stock.
No more.
The catalog disappeared.
Now the physical store is 'the catalog'. It is rare to find something in the store that I want and is in stock.
I don't bother anymore; haven't for years. The stores have become alien places.
Amazon works well enough for me.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
10/23/2016 22:08 Comments ||
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#8
Contra Sears, take a look at the Sweetwater (musical instruments and stuff) catalog. They send out at least four 3/4 inch thick catalogs, and have a great web site. They do have a store, in Ft. Wayne, IN. A bit far for me to drive, but gear, showrooms, soundstages, and studios. They should break a billion in sales this year, easy. Nice people, good policies, individuals that know what you want and what you might not want.
A new kind of hybrid, maybe. Or maybe the old time Sears w/ catalog with just one store but great Amazon plus service.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
10/23/2016 22:21 Comments ||
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I believe our headline was first coined by the Instapundit, who was kind enough to apply it to my book "A Disgrace to the Profession". But I'm glad to see, following the latest attempt to use Australia's disgraceful Section 18C to throttle freedom of speech Down Under, that The Australian's Bill Leak is introducing the concept to the Antipodes. His latest cartoon features Tim Soutphommasane, the totalitarian hack who trousers a third of a million a year as Oz's "Racial Discrimination" Commissar. Mr Leak invites Commissar Tim Jong-Un to sue him for "facial discrimination".
As for "facial discrimination", in my column on Mr Leak I mentioned Commissar Soutphommasane's thuggish bullying of a young basketball player, who made the mistake of going to a fancy-dress party as her fave pop star, Kanye West. When I spoke in Sydney a little while back, I brought up a similar and even nuttier outbreak of hysteria from one of America's many loony campuses:
Two Australian basketball players, Alice Kunek and Tess Madgen, went to a fancy-dress party – one in blackface, one in whiteface. The one in blackface was meant to be Kanye West, the one in whiteface was meant to be ...I dunno, nobody cares ...Heath Ledger as the Joker? But Australia's race discrimination commissioner has weighed in and said he's deeply disturbed. This young lady is 25, and the state – the Government of Australia – is weighing in on how she went to a fancy-dress party.
But there's a lot of blackface about. A couple of days ago, Beverly Kopper, President of the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater, released a very serious statement:
'Last night a disturbing racist post that was made to social media was brought to my attention... This post was hurtful and destructive to our campus community." The Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, Dr Tom Rios, has formed a group that has already begun meeting with students, researching these issues, and working on the development of an action plan for moving forward. The group will meet next week to plan a series of events across campus "to capture the student voice and develop a collective response to these issues... You have my promise that these steps are only the starting points and together, we will determine actions that will ultimately create a long-term cultural change.'
This was because of a racially-charged picture that two female students had posted of themselves in 'blackface'. In fact, they weren't in blackface. They were getting a facial. So they had that gunk all over their face and a couple of cucumbers or whatever on their eyes – and when they took the cucumbers off they had a giggle about how funny they looked and took a selfie. And Beverly Kopper, a complete bloody moron who happens to be a university president, is perfectly happy to destroy their lives over this. The girls are not guilty of racial discrimination; the university is guilty of facial discrimination.
This chump has now announced that, although the great big express train of outreach committees and working groups is rumbling down the track and can't be stopped, the two young ladies will not be 'disciplined'. Disciplined? For what? Beverly Kopper blamed the students for 'failing to think about the implications' – of having a facial. Because we live in a world where a facial is one step away from a minstrel show.
I'm an effete nancy-boy, and I get a facial from time to time, because I want my skin to look good for brutal close-ups on nights like this, and it's well known that 'Can I get a seaweed wrap?' is code for 'I'm a big redneck southern bigot who wants to look good under my Klan hood'. If you go to any luxury spa in Sydney right now and kick open the door there'll be whole roomfuls of people covered in algae coconut moisturizing exfoliant capering around going 'Oh, my darling little mammy, down in Alabammy...'
Sometimes a society becomes too stupid to survive. What this college president, Beverly Kopper, means when she says these students 'failed to think about the implications' of their racist exfoliating is that professional grievance mongers like her have so incentivized the taking of offence that there are now far more people who need to be offended than the number of people willing to offend them: Demand far outstrips supply. So in ten years' time these two students will be applying for jobs and their potential employer will Google them and the first 200 pages that come up will be about how racey-racey-racist they are.
The problem is not these young ladies in either Wisconsin or Australia. The problem is the likes of Beverly Kopper and Tim Soutphommasane. Because they're bonkers, and they're totalitarian. Which is a dangerous combination. Hence, that Kim Jong-Un cartoon.
#2
Tim Soutphommosane took to the stage at the Sydney Writer's Festival and said Charlie Hebdo cartoons were offensive and there was a survivor on the stage.
when asked if he was going to support free speech or support the Islamist push to reclassify "religion" as "race" so they can sue their enemies into silence, he told the questioner they must be with the bigots and racists.
#3
Steyn will probably get criticized for being "anti-Africansympathetic" and told to go to his "safe space" which I'm certain he doesn't give a fig about. Thank goodness for Steyn and his efforts to destroy this silliness of PC which has infected our culture.
If the 2016 presidential election were actually about genuine political policies, Donald Trump would defeat Hillary Clinton in one of the biggest landslides of all time. But the mainstream media--with, alas, considerable help from Donald himself--has made it about anything but.
Nevertheless, we shouldn't let those disgracefully biased, born again-bluenoses of the Newswoisie or Donald's obvious neurotic need to respond to anything and everything deter us from examining the proposals in his Saturday speech at Gettysburg.
[Townhall] "Strengthening families" is big in Hillary Clinton’s immigration platform--not American families, but families of undocumented Democrats. To that end--and "within her first 100 days in office"--Hillary has vowed to "introduce comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to full and equal citizenship." These newly minted Democrats will be speedily naturalized (likely in time for Hillary’s second term). "All families" will be granted "affordable health care," a privilege very many Americans are without.
Yet another political grant of privilege Americans don’t have, unless pigmentally endowed, is affirmative action. The throngs of immigrants and refugees--whose entry into the US Mrs. Clinton will accelerate, and whose numbers she’ll increase, should she become the next president--will benefit from affirmative action.
Con't.
#2
she can issue eo s till her hand bleeds but where will the $ come from, assuming the Rs keep the house and can find their balls? this assumes ryan is no longer speaker
[FOX] Saturday on Fox & Friends, Tucker Carlson sat down with a college professor with a remarkable record of predicting election outcomes.
Professor Helmut Norpoth, from Stony Brook University in New York State, has correctly predicted the outcomes of the last five presidential elections.
This year, he steadfastly believes Donald Trump will win the election.
Norpoth said he uses two "models" to make his prediction:
One is the "primary" model, where he compares a candidate's strength in their respective primaries.
"The candidate who does better in his party's primary beats the other guy who does less well," Norpoth said.
Looking at New Hampshire and South Carolina's primaries, Norpoth projected that Trump would be the general election favorite because of the strength of his showing, versus Hillary Clinton.
The second model he created is called the "swing of the pendulum" model.
Watch the full clip above to find out how he compared Trump and Clinton in that way, and let us know what you think in the comments.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Breitbart] On Friday, the government of gun-controlled Australia admitted that hundreds of thousands of "illegal firearms" remain in criminal possession and launched a new amnesty in hopes of persuading said criminals to turn over the weapons.
