The proposed ban has received cautious and somewhat surprising support from the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), a powerful and traditional Islamic group whose former chairman Ma’ruf Amin is now vice-president.
Ikhsan Abdullah, who heads the MUI’s law and regulatory Commission, told The Weekend Australian the niqab was “not in accordance [with] the culture and values of Indonesia.”
It’s been an awfully sudden fall for senior Trump official Mina Chang, whose State Department page has just crashed and burned. (Background here.)
Those of us fortunate enough to have studied her original self-creation recall paragraph upon paragraph touting her Ivy League credentials, her fearless compassionate forays into the world’s worst places, and more valor medals than Field Marshal Zhukov.
So what if it was all staged?
Chang had portrayed [a] 2015 trip to Afghanistan as a humanitarian mission for her nonprofit, but a defense contractor footed the bill and no aid was delivered, according to documents from the company and a former employee.
After the Afghanistan trip, Chang posted photos of herself meeting a group of Afghan women in a room. In a video posted on her charity’s website, she refers to the photo and says the Afghan women are “in hiding” at a secret location.
“This is in Afghanistan, I am sitting with women in our program, they are living in hiding. I can only say they are right outside of the Kabul area,” Chang said in an interview posted on her nonprofit’s website.
But the women were not part of any program run by her charity, Linking the World. They were wives of local employees of the defense contractor that paid for her trip…
I’ll say this for her: The woman has balls unto the breach. Having been exposed as – in the words of Fielding Mellish’s jury – incredibly guilty, she lashes out, in a statement, at all of her enemies (she shares this enemies list, and of course the Fake It Til You Make It M.O., with her president). When you finish reading Hoda Muthana’s tell-all (see post below this one), you can turn to the book I’m sure Chang will write about the lurid upbringing that turned her into a liar.
The absence of even one opinion piece expressing … forget support — expressing even sympathy for Hoda Muthana’s current situation tells you that she will have to try another approach in her effort to get her tent in al-Roj swapped for a Caliphate Barbie bedroom in Hoover Alabama.
UD proposes that she write a book, which might entail a book tour. Hear me out.
This chick had at least three jihadi husbands, and basically her only function was to produce babies. As soon as one sperm depositor was shredded, another popped up.
It was like Oh Girl I want to be with you all of the time, all day and all of the night.
I think a large reading public would be interested in details of what happened when a jihadi bride carefully nudged aside a few inches of her burqa in order to facilitate entry while remaining obedient to God’s will for women. I think a lot of people would read a first-person account of sex among the faithful.
She can frame it any way she likes – it will only be more titillating if she paints herself as a kind of slave – as long as she provides her book agent with long flowing passages of passion. UD has already provided a title (see above); and if they package the whole thing as a cautionary tale for other young girls enticed by the prospect of living in the desert, under thick robes, as a fuck doll for Abū Bakr al-Baghdadi al-Qurayshi, Muthana could definitely go on tour in Europe and even maybe America, where she could press her case with the State Department more directly.
[H]alf the stadium empty and half of the rest rooting for the enemy? A nightmare beyond comprehension.
[Florida State University] decided to fire Willie Taggart after a year-and-a-half and pay him nearly $20 million NOT to coach for the four years remaining on his contract. That was followed up by the Arkansas Razorbacks firing Chad Morris in less than two years and having to pay him more than $10 million NOT to coach. This is on top of the $12 million in buyout money the Hogs are still paying their previously fired coach, Bret Bielema…
[W]hen did it become OK for public educational institutions to simply fritter away millions of dollars like this? Think about it: In what other profession could you cost your company $17 million over two years — which is essentially what Arkansas AD Hunter Yurachek did by hiring and firing Morris — and keep your job? Can you believe Arkansas will actually end up paying $17 million for a coach who never won a conference game?…
Why, for example, did Tennessee feel the need to hire Jeremy Pruitt and give him a six-year contract worth nearly $4 million a year. Couldn’t the Vols have signed him Pruitt to, say, a four-year contract worth $2 million a year? …
Before hiring Pruitt, Tennessee fired its former coach Butch Jones and had to pay him an $8 million buyout. Why? Because Tennessee extended Jones’ contract after he went — wait for it! — 6-6 in his second season…
Why did the Florida Gators extend Jim McElwain’s contract in June 2017 and fire him four months later? When McElwain was hired away from Colorado State, the Gators had to pay most of McElwain’s $7.5 million contract buyout with his former team. When McElwain was fired, he negotiated another $7.5 million buyout settlement from the Gators. In other words, the Gators paid millions for McElwain both coming and going.
This mountain of a man is under increasing subterranean pressures, and something’s got to give. As faithful servant to his yet more herculean campanian, he has been living in fertile but shaky splendor amid the peaks of power.
Once a cool and sophisticated statesman, Pompeo is feeling the heat, and now seems destined to be buried under the acidic, blistering cleavage between himself and his master. Already you can discern the outlines of the plastered-in void his decaying corpse will leave.
… you’re a better man than I am. The writer struggles to give a complete account of all the multimillionaire assholes on NFL teams, but like everyone else who tries this trick, he seems overcome, toward the middle of the piece, by his own incredulity at the numbers.
UD wonders if it will ever occur to this guy that the reason violent, amoral, and on occasion overtly demento, shitskies are all over our best teams is that the game targets them. Still unclear? RECRUITS them. SCOUTS for them. COMPETES for them. LAVISHLY REWARDS them. The worst of the worst, most recently, were both team captains. Beau idéal: Richie Incognito. Tell me if this is still over your head.
Warren hurt his feelings (something about how he was kinda greedy to take a seventy million dollar bonus at a time when the American people were suffering through one of our worst economic downturns – a bonus, kiddies – – above his zillions in salary), so he made a Pocohantas jibe against her, as in she’s a tribalist…”Maybe tribalism is just in her DNA.”
Ooch ouch that’s gotta hurt. But now that he mentions tribes, let’s explore the one Lloyd’s people belong to. Here ya go. He’s kind of a chieftain – much of the tribal ritual is about him. In particular, his greed.
Here’s a headline with a whiff of the obsolete. Not long from now, parents will recall for their children the quaint practice of suspending football games when people in the stands or on the field initiated mass shootings. “Now of course they play right on through it – couldn’t have youth football if you suspended every game where some little fella took out his AR-15! … People still scatter. But as soon as the shooter’s finished, everyone comes back to the stadium. And something I’ve noticed is that there’s an excitement factor, a wake-up factor – like the guys on the field and the people in the stands are all shook up – but in a good way – after the shooting. The players are sharper; the fans are more enthusiastic. The whole thing feels more real; bleeding children remind the crowd of the preciousness of life and how lucky they are to be here, on a sunny day, watching football.”
Many other high-profile cases of in-game assault have gone unpunished by the criminal justice system. Kermit Washington nearly killed Rudy Tomjanovich with a punch, and was never charged. Nor was Mike Tyson for biting off Evander Holyfield’s ear. Nor was Albert Haynesworth for stomping on Andre Gurode’s head.
In the immortal words of Rufus T Firefly:
Tell him to take a teaspoonful of bicarbonate baking soda and a half a glass of water.
And it’s Texas A&M, arguably the country’s most pornographic football school, so you know that however many other people Myles Garrett beats the shit out of on national tv, the page will stay up…
UD loves the way everybody’s all ooh I’m shocked that a football game would produce a brawl and the brawl would produce an assault… And when the hero of Texas A&M, now a professional player, gets no jail time and a three-day suspension, are you still gonna be shocked? No, because your initial shock will give way to appreciation of the sincere and heartfelt violence of the people you love to watch splitting heads on the gridiron. These dudes mean it!
Says on Garrett’s Texas A&M page that he “regularly speaks to young people at various schools around the local community,” and I’m wondering what he said. If anybody annoys you, I want you to pull off their helmet and use it as a weapon to smash their head.
But look. I mean, A&M. A player arrest rate that will make your smashed head swim. Johnny Manziel’s enabler through his long alcoholic history there. Zaycoven Henderson! Rick Perry was a cheerleader (not kidding).
************
Garrett [already] had to fight the perception he was a dirty player after multiple penalties in Week 2 against the New York Jets, including one roughing the passer hit that broke Jets quarterback Trevor Siemian’s ankle. He was not suspended for that, however.
Now, when he kills someone… then his hero page will come down.
Nah.
… has ruled that ISIS propagandist Hoda Muthana is not an American citizen and can’t come back here? The New York Times, which runs a Pietà image of her with her child, calls it a “surprise ruling,” but if you read this blog you’re not surprised. There’s reasonably compelling evidence, in this case, that as the daughter of a Yemeni diplomat she never held actual American citizenship.
[Judge Reggie] Walton expressed sympathy for [Muthana’s father], but he ruled that there was enough evidence that Hoda Muthana was born while her father still had diplomatic status…
Assuming she can obtain Yemeni citizenship, she will be much happier there, because, just like ISIS, they still have slaves in that country.
Airbnb: Bringing Gangland to your neighborhood.
“It was shocking how tight he was going to be in retirement,” Cooperman said… “I’m just saying that it’s not an impressive amount of capital for two people that were leading physicians for their entire work life,” Cooperman went on. “You know, I lost more today than they spent a lifetime accumulating.”
Just to get you situated pronto in le monde Léon, if I may, where ten million dollars is a shocking shortfall, a humiliating failure, and an opportunity to shoot one’s mouth off about one’s own incomparable booty… Did bribery help Leon? Did insider trading (he had to pay a five million dollar fine to make the SEC go away in that one) help Leon? Is it fair for him to compare himself to two sadly fraud-challenged physicians who probably didn’t even engage in theft of medicaid funds?
In the political realm, Leon loves to bat designated-belligerent-billionaire-hitter. He hit one out of the park with Obama – said he never worked a day in his life; said he was just like Hitler! And now he’s taking a big ol’ swing at Elizabeth Warren, who had the temerity to remind people that he had to settle that big ol’ insider trading charge (this was long after he settled the bribery charge). (Why did he settle the insider trading charge? He said he was going to fight it.)
[Cooperman called] Warren “disgraceful” in an interview with CNBC. “She doesn’t know who the f— she’s tweeting. I gave away more in the year than she has in her whole f—-ing lifetime,” Cooperman continued. Cooperman also said he “won” his case involving insider trading, though he actually just settled it with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
******************
Someone should write an essay about that favorite word of the rogue: DISGRACEFUL. DISGRACEFUL. DEEZGRAITZFOOLLLL. The president, Giuliani, Dershowitz – all of our country’s highest-profile, most wretched rogues, use it all the time. Such a prim prissy word – the sort of thing you associate with Margaret Dumont – and yet all these guys – who are clearly Groucho Marx in the matter – are doing her. They’re doing Dumont! Why, I never! Really! There are certain conventions!
*************
UPDATE: It takes a strong man to cry. On national tv.