Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for November 15, 2013

Maybe it’s because, between the pot and the prostitutes, nobody can get angry enough to kill anyone.

Rat, they can still kick your butt in speed-skating!

You know, I’ve never seen His Majesty Willem-Alexander wear those wooden shoes.

Actually, Goat, it IS hard to sneak up on someone while wearing wooden shoes.

Are the Odor-Eaters in Holland Pine scented? Is that why the Murderers have not turned to victimizing the deaf?

Well, whaddya know? Pig is right today! Darn noisy clogs!

Thank-you Mark…I was wondering about that myself.

It is just a matter of what is considered a violent crime that makes us in the US look better than we are. For one example, in the United Kingdom extortion is considered a violent crime. When you look at just murders from guns we are by far the most violent people in the world sad to say.

maybe liam neeson is doing stuff in europe to rescue his family.

Crok eet Dutchman start at hed, eet down toward feets. When done, crok pick his teef with dutchman shoes!

It’s out of professional courtesy… All the petty criminals don’t want to move up their “corporate” ladder… .The play warnings nearly continiously in the train stations there about pick pockets and others like that working the station and to be aware of stuff around you…

well hey! wooden shoes can come in handy you know, for starters in the winter when the nice warm heat goes of, take of your shoes, get some matches and voila!! nice warm fire..

A friend from Holland, Rheinder K., said he went to school with Rudolf T., leader of a small Trotskyist party…of course I said, “Rudolf the Red knows Rheinder!”

RipleyKGarfield: Only fly in your ointment is that “Rhein” is pronounced just like the stuff that covers your melon!

@exoticdoc2 and Nabuquduriuzhur : I have a very dear friend who lives in the Netherlands and neither one of you have the slightest idea of what you are talking about. I would suggest that exoticdoc2 keep his slander to himself. What he said was both untrue and offensive.

oh, just do it the American way. Allow guns to be carried into drinking establishments. what could POSSibly go wrong?

When I was in the third grade during WWII, my uncle mailed me a pair of wooden shoes from the Netherlands. He also sent a vial of mildly-scented perfume. The vial had broken, making the shoes smell really nice. Our class was to dress in the costumes of other lands for our May Day program, so my mom got up a Dutch costume for me. Unfortunately, my uncle (an in-law) didn’t realize that my mom’s family had large feet. Although I was the next-to-smallest person in my class, the shoes werea couple of inches too short. However, for the class portrait I just jammed the front part of my feet into the shoes, and all was well.

Nab is just quoting a statistic that’s been floating around on some right wing sites recently… Like a lot of statistics, it’s mostly false but contains a grain of truth. The grain of truth comes from UK records that make it look as if it were almost as violent as the US because of the way they count violent crimes. The truth, if you look at the big picture, is that the US has to deal with 5 to 10 times as much violent crime as European countries do. The good news is that the US does not have nearly as much violent crime as many third world countries do.

A pleasant chat over coffee…

xxx

Gun control is very strict in the Netherlands. You are only allowed to have a gun when you join a sport shooting club or for hunting. The police will do a mandatory background check. You’ll have to store the gun and ammo in two separate safes and you need to have special containers for travelling to the shooting range. You are only allowed to use your gun on the shooting range or the forest/land you have your hunting permit for. The police is allowed to check those safety precautions and you can have you permit revoked if there are any irregularities. In the Netherlands there are 57.250 people with a gun permit and they own 184.000 guns, on a total of 17 million inhabitants.

It is also hard for the citizens of the Netherlands to run carrying a club and wearing furs, but I never realized that Neanderthals wore wooden shoes.

…in the ‘nether’ regions…of course…silly rabbit…

Thank you and second your comment.

Goat is reading the “Salt Lake [something]”