Badass Racing Quotes

The extremists had declared jihad against anyone and anything that challenged their vision of a pure Islamic society, and these artifacts - treatises about logic, astrology, and medicine, paeans to music, poems idealizing romantic love - represented five hundred years of human joy. They celebrated the sensual and the secular, and they bore the explicit message that humanity, as well as God, was capable of creating beauty. They were monumentally subversive.

We are a city that has had Islam for one thousand years. We had the greatest teachers and universities. And now these Bedouins, these illiterates, these ignoramuses, tell us how to wear our pants, and how to say our prayers, and how our wives should dress, as if they were the ones who invented the way?

He asked me to prepare semolina for forty people, saying that they were workers at his farm," his mother remembered. "In fact they were Islamists, but I could not refuse them.

Yuck! But also, whoa! Mom really is a badass.

We pushed it, but when the State Department says 'you're being a bunch of assholes' what are you going to do?

No, forget it. You people took the village and drove away all our business, it's you who must submit to Shariah.

acceptance of charity from thieves and oppressors is the equivalent of abetting their crimes, and that the duty of alms giving belongs to everyone who possesses a minimum degree of wealth, not just aristocrats.

A Sudanese proverb from the time declared that “Salt comes from the north, gold from the south, and silver from the country of the white men, but the word of God and the treasures of wisdom are only to be found in Timbuctoo.

...(T)he last rebels of the Tuareg uprising that had devastated the north for half a decade agreed to lay down their weapons, and the nomadic warriors surrendered thousands of Kalashnikov rifles to the government. The weapons were buried tin the concrete pedestal f a "monument of Peace" that sits on a rise on Timbuktu's outskirts- an assemblage of interlocking archways surrounded by colorful murals of Malian government soldiers and Tuareg rebels shaking hands and burning their weapons.

Seattle. I’ve never seen a city so overrun with runaways, drug addicts, and bums. Pike Place Market: they’re everywhere. Pioneer Square: teeming with them. The flagship Nordstrom: have to step over them on your way in. The first Starbucks: one of them hogging the milk counter because he’s sprinkling free cinnamon on his head. Oh, and they all have pit bulls, many of them wearing handwritten signs with witticisms such as I BET YOU A DOLLAR YOU’LL READ THIS SIGN. Why does every beggar have a pit bull? Really, you don’t know? It’s because they’re badasses, and don’t you forget it. I was downtown early one morning and I noticed the streets were full of people pulling wheelie suitcases. And I thought, Wow, here’s a city full of go-getters. Then I realized, no, these are all homeless bums who have spent the night in doorways and are packing up before they get kicked out. Seattle is the only city where you step in shit and you pray, Please God, let this be dog shit. Anytime you express consternation as to how the U.S. city with more millionaires per capita than any other would allow itself to be overtaken by bums, the same reply always comes back. “Seattle is a compassionate city.” A guy named the Tuba Man, a beloved institution who’d play his tuba at Mariners games, was brutally murdered by a street gang near the Gates Foundation. The response? Not to crack down on gangs or anything. That wouldn’t be compassionate. Instead, the people in the neighborhood redoubled their efforts to “get to the root of gang violence.” They arranged a “Race for the Root,” to raise money for this dunderheaded effort. Of course, the “Race for the Root” was a triathlon, because God forbid you should ask one of these athletic do-gooders to partake in only one sport per Sunday.

From time to time he consulted books about Islamic jurisprudence, the fikh, in his own collection when confronted with thorny problems in his marriage and his work. But religion did not play a major role in his life. What drove him most was a belief in the power of the written word—the rich variety of human experience and ideas contained between the covers of a book.

The dampness and the rain are hastening the destruction of these and many other manuscripts," Haidara told me. "They should be returned to Timbuktu as quickly as possible," The drier air in Timbuktu acted as a kind of safeguard against fungal rot, though the arid climate of his hometown was also deleterious over time, causing unprotected pages to grow brittle and fall apart. " We have begun to see... mold, mildew, and fungus on paper and also on leather bindings.

After school, there’s a crowd around my motorcycle. Shit, if anything happened to Julio I swear I’m going to kick someone’s ass. I don’t have to push through the crowd because a path opens up when I get close. All eyes are on me as I witness the vandalism to my motorcycle. They’re expecting me to be in a rage. After all, who would dare attach a pink tricycle horn to the handlebars and tape sparkling streamers from the ends of the handles? Nobody can get away with this shit. Except Brittany. I scan the area, but she’s not around. “I didn’t do it,” Lucky is quick to say. Everyone else murmurs they didn’t do it, either. Then murmurs of who it could be race through the crowd. “Colin Adams, Greg Hanson…” I’m not listening, because I know full well who the culprit is. It’s my chem partner, the one who ignored me today. I yank off the streamers with a jerk of my hand, then unscrew the pink rubber horn. Pink. I wonder if it was hers once upon a time. “Get out of my way,” I tell the crowd. They disperse pretty quick, thinking my rage level is high and they don’t want to be caught in the crossfire. Sometimes playing the part of a badass does have its advantages. The truth? I’ll use the pink horn and streamers as an excuse to talk to Brittany again.

I just want to spend the rest of today and tonight with the only girl who makes my heart race.” And that was exactly what Trinity did. She calmed me and excited me all at once. I was a tattooed, buzzed haircut, cop who gave off a badass cocky feel, but inside, this woman made me feel like a lost boy seeking the security only she could give. It was still so unbelievable how one smile or a simple touch from her could make me feel whole. “Yes,” she whispered. “You should definitely spend the night with me.” She tossed me a mischievous smile and I couldn’t help but feel relief that my fiery girl had returned.

Cat stepped in close, wedging herself between his knees. She cupped his face in her strong hands and forced him to look at her. “You need to breathe. This is not the end of the world. In spite of what you think, your fucking right eye is not your life.” Harper dragged in a huge gulp of air, only then realizing he’d stilled as if readying for a shot, though his heart raced in panic. Nodding at her words, he forced his heartbeat to slow down. “What the hell am I going to do?” In spite of the world falling around them, she smiled that beautiful, soul-shattering smile she had. “You’re going to move to a different position in your company with different tasks. Or you’re going to learn to shoot with your other eye. It’s that easy.” Was it really though? Cat tightened her hands on his face and leaned forward to press kisses to his cheeks. She paused at the corner of his right eye and pressed a lingering kiss there, then moved to wrap her arms around his neck in a fierce hug. “You’re still gorgeous and you’re still a bad-ass mother fucker,” she whispered into his ear. “That eye is such a small part of you.” Harper wrapped his arms around her, so grateful that she’d managed to find him and be here.

What is not so easy is knowing when you yourself are full of shit. Convincing yourself that you are among “the initiated” because you took some classes, ran a Spartan race, or did the Murph for the last three years, or because you have taken jiu-jitsu for eight years and can shoot really well is a mistake. The cool gear, the cool truck, the belt, the patches...it all screams badass. You are creating an image of the Instagram-friendly warrior, but maybe not so much real life.

That lady right there is a stone cold badass.

Imagine a spouse trapped in a physically abusive and violent relationship. Does one approach the domestically battered partner, whose lips are bleeding from being slapped, and demand that this person produce a thoughtful and measured solution for their physical and emotional maltreatment? And yet, in the cohabitation of different races and ethnicities that comprise our nation-house, those who are privileged and cloaked in the supremacism of whiteness expect those who have been physically exploited for centuries to administer the necessary balm to soothe their abusers’ troubled souls. Can you see how offensive it is to ask those relegated to the margins of whiteness to provide the tonic that heals those who have dispossessed, disenfranchised, and disinherited them? Rather than dealing with their complicity, these whites are demanding that the sufferers provide the means to resolve their own suffering. On the other side of this equation, even when solutions are continuously demanded from the abused, the answers they offer are ignored. Maybe the concerns of the battered are dismissed because they are voiced in anger or through too many tears of pain, making tormentors feel guilty or uncomfortable. Not only are the mistreated required to offer solutions, but they must present them in loving kindness and tender sensitivity lest aggressors feel threatened, misunderstood, offended, or aggravated. Regardless of how many times the marginalized have come forward to reason in good faith, they have been met with a refusal to listen. For this reason, the responsibility for dealing with spousal abuse ought to fall on the abuser and not the abused. Rather than focusing upon the ones being oppressed, we must keep the focus on their oppressors, holding the belligerent responsible. Constantly having to explain to members of the dominant culture how they have been exploitative while also providing remedies for one’s own maltreatment takes a psychological toll on the marginalized. Those of us who encounter the daily micro- and at times macro-aggressions experience a cumulative emotional anguish that negatively impacts our mental and physical health. Many of us who have spent a lifetime having to tell these abusers how they should not be abusing us find ourselves wrestling—all too often—with self-doubt and self-loathing. If the truth be told, white America already knows the answer.

And third, racism and ethnic discrimination are not simply blatant acts. They are more than engaging in the use of a racial or ethnic slur. They are more than wearing white sheets or burning crosses. Racism is an institutionalized ideology that creates and justifies unearned power, privilege, and profit for one group of people due to their race or ethnicity at the expense of others while systematically protecting, maintaining, and advancing said power, privilege, and profit. This institutionalized ideology is politically and economically manifested as white affirmative action, which ensures that discrimination protects access to education and jobs for less qualified white people. To describe racism and ethnic discrimination as ignorant feelings of superiority due to skin pigmentation creates a definition that helps the vast majority of whites benefiting from racist social structures to honestly believe they are not racist, and therefore they can express outrage and indignation if ever accused or questioned. Racists can really be nice, loving people who advocate colorblindness. Because they have a Black friend or an Indian grandchild, they are experts in the struggle as they speak over a person of color, hoping to educate that person on what racism might actually constitute. Racism is not a belief but complicity with an ideology. Annihilating this ideology is not learning how to be nice or more kind to people of color.

On May 18, 1981, the Council for National Policy (CNP) was founded when 160 of the nation’s leading conservatives gathered in the backyard of Richard Viguerie. Viguerie previously was the CEO of a right-wing fundraising company that had secured millions for George Wallace’s failed race-based 1968 presidential bid.