This being playoff weekend in the NFL, it seemed appropriate to serve up an appetizer from one of the contending teams’ cheerleading squads. This is from the Texans/Patriots game on December 1.
Author Marianne Williamson ended her 2020 Democratic presidential campaign on Friday after failing to gain traction in a crowded Democratic field.
“I stayed in the race to take advantage of every possible opportunity to share our message. With caucuses and primaries now about to begin, however, we will not be able to garner enough votes in the election to elevate our conversation any more than it is now,” Williamson wrote in a message to supporters.
“The primaries might be tightly contested among the top contenders, and I don’t want to get in the way of a progressive candidate winning any of them,” Williamson continued.
Williamson pledged to fully support the Democratic nominee.
Williamson had not qualified for the Democratic debate next week. The spiritual author had laid off her campaign staff nationally, a former staffer confirmed to CNN last week.
After launching her campaign in January 2019, Williamson told CNN she was running to bring a “moral and spiritual awakening” for America.
“Nothing short of that is adequate to fundamentally change the patterns of our political dysfunction,” Williamson told CNN’s John Berman at the time.
Williamson’s campaign has been little-noticed in recent months, as focus shifted to the Democratic contenders who were meeting the party’s fundraising and polling thresholds to qualify for debates and Williamson repeatedly missed the cut.
Offstage, the director nods. I step into light.
“None of this madness,” a sweeping gesture captures the previous action, “has made sense.
Your mind cycles through the events and characters, connecting dots in a vain attempt to draw order from chaos.
Relax.
The good news: there *is* a point to all of this.
The bad news: the fulness of that point is too much for this medium; as with a mountain on a map, all you get are some topological line hints.
Again: relax. Spread joy, not sorrow, and await the moment the final understanding grips you.”
After experimenting with it in this morning’s post, I’m going to hold off on adding any links people send me until this evening’s post, since I can’t access Gmail here and manually copying HTML links from my phone is a major pain. As always, contributions to the Hate Chicken & Diet Coke fund are appreciated.
Jasmine Renee Campbell is the Oregon woman facing hate crime charges after investigators said she tried to strangle a woman using the victim’s hijab.
The confrontation happened at the TriMet MAX train station in Portland on November 12, 2019. The Multnomah County District Attorney’s office announced the charges on January 3, 2020.
The victim did not suffer serious physical injuries. But District Attorney Rod Underhill explained in a news release that the victim told the police that she “no longer feels safe wearing a hijab in public.” . . .
According to the Portland Police Bureau, which is the department that led the investigation, Jasmine Renee Campbell allegedly approached the victim from behind on November 12, 2019, at a train station. Officials say that Campbell is accused of grabbing the hijab and using it to try to choke the victim.
The victim managed to push Campbell away. But, according to the Multnomah County District Attorney’s office, Campbell continued the assault. The victim said Campbell forcibly ripped the hijab from the victim’s head. Campbell then allegedly rubbed the garment “across multiple exposed sexually intimate parts” of her own body. . . .
The Multnomah County District Attorney’s office says the two women were strangers to each other. The victim was not identified by name.
But investigators described her as a 24-year-old student at Portland State University. She is a foreign exchange student from Saudi Arabia. . . .
As of this writing on January 5, Jasmine Renee Campbell was not in custody. Court records with the Oregon Judicial Department show that there is an active warrant for her arrest. . . .
The District Attorney’s Office says that the arrest warrant remains active because Campbell failed to show up for a scheduled court hearing. Campbell had been ordered to appear at the Multnomah County Circuit Court at 9 a.m. on January 3, 2020.
So, not only did Campbell attack a Muslim immigrant, but she is now at large, a fugitive from justice, free to attack others. If such an Islamophobic hate crime against an immigrant had been committed by a white male right-wing Trump supporter, CNN would be giving us hourly updates on the manhunt for this dangerous fugitive. As it is, however, this crime is strictly “local news” for some reason . . .
