Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

President Biden is doing good where he can, and getting it done.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

If marriage is the equivalent of selling yourself into slavery, women with self respect should reject the offer.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

The lights are all blinking red.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Meanwhile, in New Zealand…

Meanwhile, in New Zealand…

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(Warning – wrenching video below the fold)

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41Comments

  3. 3.

    Royston Vasey

    I love our leader. It helps that the opposition (National Party) also voted for the Gun Banning bill.
    Plus a unicameral parliament (no upper house).

    Go Cindy!

    RV in NZ

  5. 5.

    Royston Vasey

    Before you can legally buy a gun from a gun store in NZ, you have to apply for a gun license.
    The license application form (which is quite comprehensive) requires you to supply two referees, who have to be residents of NZ.
    Then you get a visit from the Police Firearms Vetting Officer who visits the applicant in their own home, interviews them, and checks the security of the property.
    This includes the proof of a locked box for the firearms.
    The referees are also contacted.
    If you pass all this you get your gun license.

    This is all before the change in NZ gun laws (ban on semi-automatics etc.).

    RV in NZ

  6. 6.

    Mike in NC

    Our next door neighbors have good friends in NZ and talk to them on the phone frequently. Those people have no time for our silly bullshit about guns.

  7. 7.

    Villago Delenda Est

    THIS is leadership! I won’t bother telling Donald to watch her, because he’s an utter know-it-all jackass who knows less than SGT Schultz, but Teresa May might learn something. Or not.

  8. 8.

    Yutsano

    @Royston Vasey: Wait…how can you have a national tragedy and not have tots & pears? If shootings have taught me anything as an American, you gots to have tots & pears after something like this happens.

    All kidding aside, good on you folks. It only makes me wish I could take up residence down there.

  9. 9.

    Mai naem mobile

    I don’t think you can get rid of guns in this country totally. Maybe registration and limits on ownership and maybe assault rifles but all guns – too many Americans have paranoid feelings about not being able to buy guns . I remember talking to a liberal friend of mine about gun control during one of the mass shootings and even she went on about Hitler being able to take over Germany because guns were outlawed. I don’t understand why people don’t realize you don’t stand a chance against American soldiers if the US government really decided to go all dictatorship. I don’t care how many machine guns you have.

  14. 14.

    TS (the original)

    @Mai naem mobile: Hitler took over Germany via the ballot box. They gave it to him – nothing to do with owning guns

    @Mike in NC:

    Those people have no time for our silly bullshit about guns.

    Most people in democracies around the world have no time for the US b.s. about guns. It is impossible to understand not being able to go to school, concerts, movies, shops without the fear of being shot and/or having real ‘mericans wondering around open carrying their weapons.

  16. 16.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @TS (the original):

    Hitler took over Germany via the ballot box. They gave it to him

    The German Conservatives gave it to him.

    Neither he or his party won majorities at the ballot box, he just presented himself to the Conservatives as the guy most likely to successfully eliminate the Left. They fell over themselves gifting him the Chancellorship.

  18. 18.

    Redshift

    Qasim Rashid is running for a state senate seat in Virginia, btw. I’ve been very impressed with him on Twitter; I wish him the best of luck.

  21. 21.

    ola azul

    @Viva BrisVegas:

    The German Conservatives gave it to him.

    Neither he or his party won majorities at the ballot box, he just presented himself to the Conservatives as the guy most likely to successfully eliminate the Left. They fell over themselves gifting him the Chancellorship.

    Agree on balance, specially with the general tenor of conservatives as useful fools, but would quibble w/a coupla things. Think you nailed the distinction with a difference re: paleo-conservatives capitulating to the Nazis, thinking they could use the Nazis when in fact the Nazis were rolling the paleo-conservatives, but, from Wiki:

    In the federal election of July 1932, the NSDAP won 37.3% of the popular vote (13,745,000 votes), an upswing by 19 percent, becoming the largest party in the Reichstag, with 230 out of 608 seats.

    The Nazi Party lost some seats later that year in Nov., but they absolutely did have the decided controlling plurality of seats in the Reichstag in ’32, prior to Shitler’s appointment as chancellor in Jan. ’33 — it was the very reason the Nazis held such sway (that, and the, you know, violence).

    In fact, b/c the Nazis had the vast plurality of seats, they were entitled to elect the President of the Reichstag, which is how noted sadist monster Hermann Goering got the nod. (And while it’s true the Nazis never won majorities of the vote or seats, it’s a lil misleading, i.e. it’s like saying, as our own home-grown conservadunces do here in ‘Murica, that Bill Clinton was an illegitimate President b/c he didn’t win the “majority” of the vote — i.e. more than 50%, in the year Perot gleaned 20 percent of the vote or whatever it was.)

    Hitler never won anything, he was appointed, as you note. (He wasn’t even a German citizen till the thirties, renouncing his Austrian citizenship in ’25, and only then thru political chicanery). Hitler lost in the election for president to Hindenberg in the spring of ’32 and was then offered the vice-chancellorship by Papen, who was then chancellor, but Hitler declined, holding out for a better opportunity to fuck up his own country and later the world.

    But b/c the Nazis were ascedent, and b/c the paleos thought they could use the Nazis, Papen cajoled, wheedled and worked on aging dotard Hindenberg to allow Hitler to become Chancellor, with the proviso that Papen would baby-sit Hitler as vice-chancellor. Adding to the march of folly — and really what is proto-fascism w/o the willing, nay eager cooperation of industry? — The Industrielleneingabe, a letter signed by 22 masters-of-the-universe reps from industry, finance and agriculture, called for Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as chancellor.

    So Shitler was made chancellor. Reichstag Fire in March ’33, Enabling Law enacted shortly thereafter, endowing Hitler with dictatorial powers and demanding personal loyalty to himself, and the rest is horror, darkness and cruelty.

  22. 22.

    hervevillechaizelounge

    @mrmoshpotato:

    I was trying to talk one of my friends into taking a road trip to urinate on the graves of famous republicans. We could live stream it, pun intended, and maybe we could take outfit and musical accompaniment requests for extra cash.

    I’ll gladly don a Hillary Clinton pantsuit and piss on Lee Atwater’s grave while my boombox blasts “Sweet Home Alabama,” but it’s going to cost you.

    Oddly, my friend was less than enthusiastic:(

  23. 23.

    sm*t cl*de

    Keep in mind the population of NZ is only 5 million, so this attack killed roughly the same proportion of their population as 9/11 did to ours

    Since the terrorist came from Australia, New Zealand should now follow the Bush precedent and invade Fiji.

  24. 24.

    mike shupp

    I have this image … A right wing nut kills a bunch of Moslems for the sake of his ideology. It can happen, yeah? So we don’t want to sanctify him or spread that creed. So we bend over backwards, and we never ever say “Albert Bolwer, a follower of the American Bund movement, killed 76 Moslem worshippers at a mosque in Helena, Montana on Friday March 8, 2019.” We tell NBC and CNN and Fox not to mention that the “incident” ever occurred. It can be referred to on Montana television or newspapers, obliquely– news reports can say “the alleged shooter, a follower of the American Bund movement, killed 76 persons at religious exercises on Friday, March 8.”

    In the best of all possible worlds, no one outside of Helena Montana will ever hear that someone stormed a mosque and killed 76 people. It will be a non-event. No one will ever hear about it. The American Bund will never get the praise it looked for — or the almost as valuable denunciations — and the shooter will go to huis execution anonymously.

    Anonymous executions for unmentioned crimes That’s what liberals want to be remembered for. We can’t control these monsters but we can hope to persuade everyone that these massacres aren’t really happening, and in a thousand years we will be rewarded by recognition for our honesty, objectivity, and transparency.

    Am I missing something?

  27. 27.

    BretH

    @mike shupp:

    We can hope to persuade everyone that these massacres aren’t really happening…

    No you’re not missing something. Your straw man is alive and well right here.

  28. 28.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Is it possible that Trump’s freak out is over this empathy thing in New Zeeland, Such an alien concept to Trump as empathy must be quite scary.

  29. 29.

    The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion

    @mike shupp:”Am I missing something?”
    A point, perhaps? A coherent thought? A reason for existence? All of the above?

  34. 34.

    J R in WV

    @mike shupp:

    …Anonymous executions for unmentioned crimes That’s what liberals want to be remembered for. We can’t control these monsters but we can hope to persuade everyone that these massacres aren’t really happening, and in a thousand years we will be rewarded by recognition for our honesty, objectivity, and transparency.

    Am I missing something?

    Yes, you are missing something. The obvious, that many of these monsters do their dirty deeds in order to become famous. I’m not good with names, so I have forgotten the name of the bastard who shot John Lennon and many many other.

    Also… you appear to have posted here just once before, in 2016, on a thread by Hillary Rettig, when you wrote nearly meaningless drivel about political and economic fear.

    Appearing out of the internet haze once every 3 years can’t be called trolling, but it can be called annoying. Perhaps you could post anonymously by using 3 periods as your name? Never tried it, but maybe … could continue a time-honored tradition of posting pointless and poorly thought out drivel about whatever.

  38. 38.

    L&DinSLT

    Dead thread I know but I also have about 10 people (?) on my pie list. I’m on here many times per day and appreciate and am a little intimidated by commenters wit and wisdom. Thanks for all you do!

  39. 39.

    Mike G

    @Royston Vasey:

    I have friends in NZ who are hunters, they have rifles and shotguns.
    There are classes, background checks and a license to get. They have a gun safe in the house which is inspected periodically.
    They respect guns as tools for a purpose like other outdoor equipment, with a strong awareness of their potential dangers. They have no interest in egotism, showing off, horseplay or investing their personal identity in their weapons.

    This is what a healthy attitude to guns looks like.

  40. 40.

    Royston Vasey

    @Mike G: I have here in NZ who are also hunters and members of gun clubs. They take the respect for guns and safety very seriously. Locked cabinets at home and in the ute when driving. Guns are generally out of sight/out of mind, as there is no open carry law. Use the gun at he gun club, or out in the bush, then locked away. A tool, not a plaything.
    RV in NZ

  41. 41.

    mike shupp

    @J R in WV: I make two comments here (three now) in three years and you find that “annoying”? Get a life, guy.

    Yes, I do understand that mass killers hope to be remembered in history, and that putting up barriers of some sort so they are not remembered may work as a deterrence. But I am not convinced that this is a workable or even desirable policv. Let us suppose, for example, that we find the German attempt to exterminate Jews during World War Two to be objectionable. And so we rewrite history books so they no longer mention the Nazis — there are only references to “a political party” and “members of a large political party.” Hitler and Goering are no long mentioned — instead they become “the leader of one political party” and “a deputy of one party’s leader, charged with defense matters”. And so on.

    Yeah, this punishes Nazis. Does it bring back their victims? No. Does it help us ensure that people like the Nazis will be restrained from obtaining political power in the future? It does not. In fact, it’s just the opposite. We need real rigorous knowledge of what the Nazis did and hoe they rose to power if we hope to impede such groups in the future, and pretending they are as ethereal as the fairies that leave quarters under pillows when children lose their baby teeth is absolutely not the way to go.

    So. I don’t like the idea that we should be kept in ignorance of the New Zealand killer’s name and background. I think it’s absolutely NOT the way to go. Y’know what I’d prefer instead? New Zealand ought to try the guy, and convict him, and send him off to jail for life. To a SuperMax actually, and if New Zealand doesn’t have a supermax perhaps they might ask the US to house the guy for them. And in that SuperMax, the New Zealand killer would live happily in total isolation. He would never hear a word from other prisoners or even from his guards. He would be allowed out of his cell for one hour a day to walk alone about an “exercise space” about the size of a parking slot. He would have no Internet connections, no network television, no radio. He would however be allowed to watch tapes of religious services and helpful advice, such as “Anger Self-Management” — and basically he would hear no other voices or be informed by the knowledge of others. For the rest of his life — which I would hope, being an evil person, would be a very long life.

    So that was my underlying thought, and I sort of hoped other people here reading it might be stirred to similar ideas, and if you didn’t like it … well, tough stuff, guy. And I think you might be out of the ordinary here, rather than me. As you’ve pointed out, I’ve been reading posts here at Balloon Juice foe years, and have seldom found a reason to raise my voice. I thought that showed I liked this web site, not that it proved me a monster.

    What am I missing?

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