Michael Vick was given a somewhat ridiculous ten year contract a few years back, you know, before he was put in prison for activities related to his interstate dogfighting activities. Apparently, he might have something to do other than second rate football leagues once he gets out. The NYT points the way in an article on the Afghan's penchant for fighting:
Afghans like to fight. They will boast about this. They will say that fighting is in their blood. And for all the horrors of three decades of war, they still find room to fight for fun, most often through proxies: cocks, rams, goats, camels, kites.
This includes dogfighting, alone with kite fighting (sic*), is back post-Taliban (or to the degree it is so):
A dog is declared the victor when he clearly establishes his dominance over the other, or when the weaker dog displays one of the telltale signs of submission, including backing off from the fight or putting its tail between its legs. They are usually pulled apart before they can inflict serious damage on each other.The stakes for dogfighters are too high to risk their charges any further. Dogs may be a costly investment for the average Afghan, but they can also make their owners money.
Clearly. Just look at how well football players and boxers are treated in this country. Meanwhile, in the new "yes" movie, the character clearly worked for Wamu:
“I’d lie if I said every piece of documentation was properly signed and dated,” said Mr. Parsons, speaking through wire-reinforced glass at a California prison near here, where he is serving 16 months for theft after his fourth arrest — all involving drugs.
While Mr. Parsons, whose incarceration is not related to his work for WaMu, oversaw a team screening mortgage applications, he was snorting methamphetamine daily, he said.
“In our world, it was tolerated,” said Sherri Zaback, who worked for Mr. Parsons and recalls seeing drug paraphernalia on his desk. “Everybody said, ‘He gets the job done.’ ”
At WaMu, getting the job done meant lending money to nearly anyone who asked for it — the force behind the bank’s meteoric rise and its precipitous collapse this year in the biggest bank failure in American history.
The article links up to an old commercial entitled the "Power of Yes" to underline the point. These sort of things, not just blaming Clinton and such for extending loans to poor people (apparently, they traded drugs for loans), might help explain how the economy is so f-ed up.
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* Seriously, this probably could have been an alternate title to The Kite Runner:
In Afghanistan, wherever there are kites, there is kite fighting. During the fight, or "jang," two kites are flown close to one another, often at great heights. The object is to use the wire of your kite to cut the wire of your opponent's kite and set it free.
Not to worry. Kites are too important for them to inflict too much damage.