… and various Islamic groups keep lazily saying yes. I mean, they don’t even bother arguing the thing, making a case — they just say dude no problem so what’s your problem?

Ali Abu Shwaima, the chairman of the Lombardy Islamic Center, said there has never been a problem due to women wearing a burqa or veil, thus such a ban is pointless. “Everyone should be free to dress as they wish,” he said.

One, no one is allowed to present themselves to any public realm I’m aware of in any way they wish. Two, a logic issue: If there has never been a problem of this sort, why is northern Italy, along with many regions and countries all over the world, passing burqa bans? UD detects a problem. This guy might at least do everyone the favor of offering reasons why banning burqas is a bad idea. As you know if you follow UD on the subject, burqa fans are strikingly lazy (banners are Islamophobes is about as far as many of them think they need to go) in its defense. I’m guessing it’s because it’s hard to defend.

Scathing Online Schoolmarm says: Even at the highest levels, editors sometimes mistake plain and plane. In a column about Michelle Obama, Charles Blow writes:

[Racists have always believed black people lack] the morality and character to exist on the same plain as white people.

It’s an understandable error, since it sort of makes sense to say someone deserves to exist in the same geographical location as other people; but the actual idea is that they are on the same level. SOS is going to guess that an editor will soon correct it.

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Editors have now corrected it.

Where you can still run sleeveless on the boardwalk. It’s that warm.

From their greedy idjit prez to their AD — a man very highly compensated for having the brains to leave messages on journalists’ phones telling said journalists they are “fucking scum” for questioning him about the third case of psycho coaches at the school — Rutgers University has proved itself one of America’s premier high culture locations. The life of the mind is in good hands there.

You can’t help wondering, driving through Potomac, Maryland, or the Hamptons, or hundreds of locations like them, what’s going to happen to all the empty, unsellable, mcmansions. Turns out not every generation of Americans wants a meaninglessly vast, crushingly expensive box in a distant field – so once the owners realize they’re also desperate to get out of them, what do you do with the abandoned, house-littered landscape?

Of course there are always squatters – Florida and Nevada mcmansions are full of them – but there’s no money in that. OTOH: Turns out a beautiful cosmic convergence is playing out right in front of our eyes: Owners are renting to enormous bring-your-own-guns parties! Shooters want anonymity for their shooting; owners want rental income: Win/Win.

Yes, neighbors are pissed about hundreds of drunk dangerous people next door in what they thought was an upscale neighborhood — dumping trash, blasting music, fighting, crashing their cars, and killing each other — but town councils don’t give a shit, and by the time the police get there, as in lovely Orinda, California, five people are already dead, and more to come, kiddies.

And look – as I’m sure the NRA will explain to the local belly-achers – there are two cool things they’re overlooking here:

1. They can watch the massacre on YouTube. Yes! It was filmed.
2. The Orinda party was on Halloween. How many parents can show their trick or treaters real corpses?

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Uhhhhhhhh… okay! Day 1 post-massacre, Airbnb announces it’s banning party houses. But if you read the article I linked to, it’s clear that this won’t be easy. Massive parties and criminal activities have for some time been the “scourge” of the industry, and UD doesn’t see how you can effectively police liars of the sort who lied her way into the use of the Orinda house. Plus, as abandoned mcmansion territory grows, there won’t be any neighbors to complain about your meth lab/assault weapon jamboree. Miles of tumbleweed and turrets will assume a Mad Max character…

Parents of teeny weeny soccer players get all booohooo when it turns out spectators carry multiple weapons, including an assault rifle. I mean hellooo? This is America, people!

Scathing Online Schoolmarm howled with laughter through this wonderful essay. But she’s a mere sixty-six. Your mileage may differ.

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But this, by Roger Angell, is even better. I’ve mulled over this paragraph for years.

“My list of names [of dead friends] is banal but astounding, and it’s barely a fraction, the ones that slip into view in the first minute or two. Anyone over sixty knows this; my list is only longer. I don’t go there often, but, once I start, the battalion of the dead is on duty, alertly waiting. Why do they sustain me so, cheer me up, remind me of life? I don’t understand this. Why am I not endlessly grieving?”

Violence is now so bad in German soccer – a referee remains in the hospital, recovering from quite serious wounds inflicted on him by a player who attacked him when he ordered the player off the field – that referees have gone on strike. On one team, bodyguards will be assigned in the future to game officials. Play on!

Wonder what’ll happen to the homicidal honey… Will they make him team captain, put on a parade in his honor, or give him the keys to the city?

Has anyone been called “disgusting” by more people than Harvard’s highest-profile professor? Does Harvard care that its best-known professor is fighting off claims that he was deeply engaged with a sex slaver, defends people who mutilate children, and praises his fellow tv news panelist who calls heroic American patriots spies? At what point in this man’s career will Harvard decide to break off the association?

Ceausescu.

Trump.

“It’s almost as if it pays to be not depraved.”