The Summer Thread

[angra]

Kings does it again.

"The King's School headmaster won't expel boy charged with rape "

Isn't this where Alan Jones was sports master?

Strange coincidence. Check "Jones town".

[Matthew Of Canberra]

"The King's School headmaster won't expel boy charged with rape"

Isn't guilt for the courts to decide?

[angra]

Yes - if there was a criminal act committed, which the head disputes.

However when I was at school (yes a long time ago) my girlfriend was expelled for wearing a skirt deemed too short.

And my friend was forbidden from calling his puppy Ringo, as this was the name of an evildoer in a popular beat combo.

Ah, the good old days!

[angra]

Hey Matthew, there's a debate going on down your way about eradicating the carp in Lake Burley Griffin. There are thousand of 'em and the local fish don't get a look in.

What are your views?

(I remember a pub at Tallangatta with a stuffed Murray Cod on the wall which weighed around 60 lbs when caught)

[angra]

Hell that one was a mere teenager. The largest Cod ever caught weighed 250 pounds and was 6 foot long!

[Matthew Of Canberra]

"What are your views?"

No idea. I wasn't aware that there was a debate.

I sort of assumed that the thing was riddled with carp. People fish them, apparently they make good fertiliser (if not good eating).

I honestly have no idea what management plans there are for the lake. It's a completely artificial environment, let's face it.

[chookmustard]

The carp be good for plants

[Matthew Of Canberra]

Chutzpah!

Julie Bishop criticises government's foreign aid switch

Acting Opposition Leader, Julie Bishop, has condemned the government shifting money from the foreign aid budget to pay for processing the increasing number of asylum seekers.

I can't watch the video just now, but I wonder if leigh sales asked JB where the money came from for the SAS to go intercept the MV Tampa, and subsequent related activities.

[Matthew Of Canberra]

Oh, wow. This one's a ripper.

www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/21/just-say-no-to-dumb-gun-laws.html?obref=obinsite

I actually agree with her (as above/below) that the proposed "assault weapons ban" won't achieve anything. I think it's just fundamentally the wrong approach. If I were prez, I'd just enforce the second amendment as it is written. You want a gun? Join the national guard. If you HAVE a gun, then you should consider yourselves AWOL from the national guard and therefore subject to any penalties which normally apply until such time as you meet certain requirements.

But Megan McArdle's argument is that it's just too hard, and silly.

More recently, she proposed

I'd also like us to encourage people to gang rush shooters, rather than following their instincts to hide; if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly, because even a guy with a very powerful weapon can be brought down by 8-12 unarmed bodies piling on him at once. Would it work? Would people do it? I have no idea; all I can say is that both these things would be more effective than banning rifles with pistol grips.

What's depressing about that is that it might actually work, and it probably is more effective than anything that is likely to ever actually be implemented in the US.

The rest of that second article is careful misdirection, which makes me wonder how disingenuous she is. She talks about automatic weapons already being illegal (and therefore not justifying any new laws) without qualifying what she means. No kidding, automatic weapons ARE illegal. Semi-automatic weapons are not. The effect is that mass shooters just have to keep pulling the trigger. If anything, it just stops them from wasting ammunition.

[Matthew Of Canberra]

Let's go down the rabbit hole.

This one hasn't gone mainstream ... yet.

www.orlytaitzesq.com/?p=367385

More evidence of something very wrong and inconsistent with the Sandy Hook story, as it was told to us.

Those birthers, gee ... nothing gets by 'em.

[Matthew Of Canberra]

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott is continuing to stand by Mal Brough, despite conceding he has not read a scathing Federal Court judgment involving the former Howard government minister.

Yeah. Right.

[Matthew Of Canberra]

Having a trawl this morning through the latest nonsense being reported about Adam Lanza, the kid who did the latest school-shooting.

Teh rights was briefly obsessed with "mental health" questions, and PJM was even briefly very excited at the prospect that he might be taking mental-health-treatment-related drugs. But no - he was on no medication at all, and seems to have had a mild case of asbergers - a conditition with no correlation with violence.

At least up until yesterday, there was much excitement about the claim from a plumber who visited the house a few times that lanza was "obsessed with video games". As an unemployed 20-something, it's not all that surprising that he played video games. I once rather liked Return To Castle Wolfenstein, and actually got rid of my copy of Halo so I couldn't play it any more. They are very addictive. But looking for evidence in video games is like focusing on young males with time on their hands.

Given that the kid also destroyed his hard drives, I'm going to speculate that there might have been some pr0n as well, and he didn't want anyone finding it. Just a thought.

The very latest nonsense is a guy out west called ryan kraft, who's running a charity to raise fund for the victims. He baby-sat lanza 10 years ago (seriously - this is evidence) and remarks that the kid's mum told him "not to turn his back on lanza". Oooh spooky ... but not at all surprising if lanza was a difficult kid. I've heard similar things said about ENERGETIC kids.

But it appears that there's no obvious trouble at home. They lived in a nice big house in a good neighborhood. Mum was single, but doing well on assets and alimony from her ex, after (apparently) an amicable split. Lanza, apparently, wanted for nothing - not even attention. He had graduated, and even attended university for a couple of years.

So, there's scuttlebutt about these vague warnings from his mum suggesting that he was in some way dangerous. But that didn't stop her collecting guns (lots and lots of guns) and even (this has been reported) taking Adam and his brother target shooting as kids.

It would even seem that the guns were stored safely - lanza tried to buy a rifle of his own not long before the shooting, and failed the background check. If he could just get a gun out of the cabinet, then I don't see why he'd have bothered. Still - those safely stored guns didn't do mrs lanza much good when push came to shove.

It would be, I think, slightly unfair to focus TOO closely on the reported claim that Mrs Lanza was a doomsday prepping survivalist ... (something that you probably won't see reported on Fox or PJM). That doesn't (or shouldn't) cause a kid to nuts and kill children. I doubt if we'll ever know what was actually going through his head (which is a pity, because I'd really like to know).

There was, apparently, some sort of argument between lanza and some teachers at the school the day before. Given that he wasn't actually attending the school, that seems relevant.

But like any situation, things were only improved by the addition of semi-automatic weapons. The gift that just keeps on giving.

[angra]

Blair shows his clear grasp of logic yet again by quoting approvingly from PJM...

"“When people say things like ‘don’t let this moment pass without acting on gun control,’ what they’re really saying is our arguments are so unpersuasive that they can only succeed when people aren’t thinking clearly.” Quite so."

[angra]

"Aren't thinking clearly"?

Imagine little Timmeh saying that with a gun held to his head.

Not a threat - just personal experience (twice).

You actually DO think clearly in extremis. "Is it worth tackling this bloke? No the risk is too great. Just give him what he wants. Could I grab his arm? No"

The shock and 'not thinking clearly' kicks in after about 10 minutes. Then you become custard.

Better if he didn't have a gun in the first place surely?

Not according to Tim, whom I bet has never been closer to a real gun than in the movies.

Armchair pundits are complete crap.

Little Timmeh - go and walk around the suburbs of Moresby or Lae for a few hours, then you may become qualified to comment. Otherwise, go back to your latte/mocha/decaf/coke in the inner eastern suburbs - or whatever you are on.

[jack]

Oh, and Timmeh's gotcha against Phillip Adams is apparently that PA actually uses guns !1!!!

Er... on his farm, apparently, for authentically traditional rural purposes such as would be typical of ... er ... a farmer. You know, like putting injured stock out of their misery or culling feral pests.

Some gotcha. Does Timmeh imagine PA stalking his farm with an automatic assault weapon?

But Timmeh and friends DO seem genuinely distressed by PA's jibes about the phallic symbolism of A NICELY COCKED GUN.