O dio! Something’s fahny
With my Modigliani.
Mio santo Amedeo –
They’re stripping off his halo
And I want back my mahny.

A candidate running for Illinois attorney general was robbed at gunpoint while he was taking promotional photos for his campaign Thursday afternoon in the Northwest Side ward where he’s also the Democratic committeeman…

Aaron Goldstein, 42, and several members of his campaign team were in the middle of taking publicity shots when the robbery happened…

“So, as far as the campaign, we are moving forward,” [Goldstein’s campaign manager] said. “Basically, this was a totally a random act of violence in the community. But when it happens to you, of course, you’re shooken up.”

Did you not see Cam Newton
Splattered all over the Superdome turf
And Dante Fowler Jr. slam Tyrod Taylor’s head
So hard into the EverBank Field grass that he sent him
Straight into concussion protocol?

The 60 mph collisions from 1970 are 90 mph now.
And it’s not Volkswagens anymore. It’s 18-wheelers.
Ben Roethlisberger is bigger than Dwight White was
When he played for the Steel Curtain.

… the word of the day.

Dzhisös, the hohliest ov mortal men
On this, our fallen earth of eoliths,
To thee we offer selihoth, amen:
Qui thollies peccata mundi, inwith.

Human rights trump human rites.

Annice Kpana thanks a bride for making her her bridesmaid, and in so doing explains her class attendance policy at Columbia.

Is this the same Annice Kpana who in 2010 filed for Porsche Cayenne-related bankruptcy?

Today Annice Kpana was arrested, along with a Columbia University financial aid director and two other women. She was part of a convoluted but rewarding scheme in which the financial aid director

funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to the three students between 2013 and 2017, inflating their cost-of-attendance figures on forms in years where they weren’t enrolled in any courses so they could obtain large stipends. In turn, according to the complaint, they paid her back with kickbacks in tens of thousands of dollars — sometimes including “love” or “Thank you!” in the memo line of personal checks.

So… the story is starting to bounce around big time, because it’s Columbia, and because it went on for a long while (some sources say it lasted much longer than four years). And because… why did it take the school so long to catch on? How did it finally catch on? There’s plenty more to know. Columbia hasn’t issued a statement.

******************

From the full complaint:

“[D]uring several of these years, KPANA was also receiving federal student aid in connection with her enrollment at unrelated institutions.”

… scandal of big-time American university sports.

A sample:

In May, Wright State University, in Dayton, Ohio, announced that it would increase its athletics allocation by $1.6 million while cutting $31 million from the rest of its budget and laying off dozens of employees. The faculty union pointed out that basketball, Wright State’s most popular sport, regularly failed to fill even half the seats in the campus stadium and decried the decision as absurd. “There’s no way of reconciling it or justifying it. It’s simply outrageous,” says the AAUP’s [Rudy] Fichtenbaum, who teaches at Wright State.

We prefer – we even assume – this trajectory, in which human character is not utterly set at birth, but expands toward some form of realization and even – given a strikingly bad set of character traits – conversion over time.

The story of one of this blog’s minor, persistent, characters – Yeshiva University benefactor Ira Rennert – represents an all too human reminder of the difference between literature and life. For as this multi-billionaire enters his 83rd year of life, as he winds down his tale, he simply persists in his awfulness.

And this is interesting. UD finds it interesting to contemplate such a man, with his Long Island residence so notorious that, when he was on trial for looting the retirement fund of one of his businesses (he was found guilty), his lawyer begged the judge not to allow the jurors to see photographs of it because it would “inflame” them; a man, who having been made to repay the retirement funds, is now suing his lawyers for that amount.

Whenever America’s obscenely rich behave obscenely, there you will find Rennert — flying his private helicopter illegally; polluting the world’s environment; cheating on his taxes, bankrolling illegal settlements.

Like Bernard Madoff’s right-hand man, Ezra Merkin, Ira Rennert is a very high-profile pious person. His name ornaments a business institute for Orthodox Jewish entrepreneurs; he was until recently head of New York’s most prominent synagogue. Ezra Merkin’s synagogue. All three men (along with comrade in whatever Zygi Wilf, after whom a Yeshiva campus is named) were/are majorly involved with/major donors to the extremely curiously run Yeshiva University.

But that, of course, is literary: religious hypocrisy.

Well, you’d think so.

Bonnie Greer, chair [of the Bronte Society] from 2011 until she resigned in 2015, once had to call order at a meeting by banging her Jimmy Choo stiletto on the table. Last year, its [annual meeting] descended into chaos as the chair was heckled repeatedly. There have been mass resignations, accusations of “Stasi-like” behaviour and a rapid turnover of figureheads.

… brings down another one.

Sing it.

Seventy-six percent want the burqa banned,
With a hundred and ten percent close at hand.
They are followed by rows and rows
Of tut-tutting intellos
Led by Mr Tariq Ramadan.

The highest courts; petitioners; democracy!
Thundering, thundering all along the way.
The music that you’re hearing over dale and hill
Is the people’s will
Having its big fat say.

Starting the 21st, you can see an exhibit here that features the work of Mr UD‘s father, Jerzy Soltan.

With yet another University of Minnesota athletics sex crime, head coach Rich Pitino, of the distinguished sex crime family, calls for one of his private jets, a gift from the taxpayers of that state, to whisk him away.

**********
UD thanks Carl.

Parking lots outside stadiums and other major event spaces represent prime hunting ground for gun-hungry thieves, who can weave through cars trying door handles until they find one that’s unlocked.