MichiBlogger

PRIMARY TODAY: This is what Michigan wanted when it moved up its primary. Michigan wanted to matter more, and it will, at least for the Republican race: Tuesday could be super for Republicans. About 20% of registered voters are expected to participate.

Many Democrats, of course, are not on the Michigan ballot. I’ll go out on a limb and predict a Clinton victory in that race. However, with no real reason to vote Democrat, many Democrats are probably considering “crossing over” and voting in the Republican race to sway things. A GR Press poll shows that 22% of respondents say “I normally vote Democratic and will vote on the Republican ballot”

Meanwhile: Independents may help McCain

I predict that McCain will beat out Romney by a slight margin, with Guilliani and Thompson back in the pack. Huckabee is tough to predict. I have trouble believing he’ll do well, but surveys and so-called experts say otherwise. We’ll see.

Ron Paul will be MIA, which will lead to more outcries of “stolen election” from his supporters.

No write-ins will be accepted. See here for more info on this year’s primary process.

PICTURES: 2008 Detroit Auto Show.

MICHIBLOGGER IS UPGRADING to Moveable Type 4.01. There will probably be a few hiccups along the way, but we should be through them quickly. Let me know if you see anything broken or unusual.

UPDATE: Well, that went even better than expected. As far as I can tell, we’re fully upgraded and no one should be able to tell the difference. Let me know if you come across anything odd.

BUT A MILLION DOLLARS? Lawsuit alleges coach offered beer to student

A Kalamazoo Central High School student is seeking almost $1 million in damages in a lawsuit that alleges her former volleyball coach offered her a beer and that the athletic director told her to keep quiet about it…

The suit claims that in February 2006, [volleyball coach Kilee] Goetz offered Brittany Grayson, then 15, a beer while at a restaurant. The suit does not say whether Brittany Grayson ever received or drank the beer.

I guess I’m not sure what warrants a $999,999 lawsuit here. What I don’t like about this sort of thing is that I end up siding with volleyball coaches who allegedly offered student-athletes alcohol. That, if true, is bad. But suing the school, the board, the principal, the athletic director, and the coach for a million dollars is over the line.

COMING SOON: One Book, One County 2008

The title of Kent District Library’s ‘One Book, One County’ for 2008 will be announced January 19th.

Last year’s book, October Sky, was a good one and meeting the author, Homer Hickam, was awesome.

NOT SURPRISING: Toyota passes Ford in U.S. sales in 2007. Ford had been #2 behind General Motors for the previous 75 years.

END OF AN ERA AT MICHIGAN: Carr’s final game comes against No. 9 Gators in Capital One Bowl

Florida head coach Urban Meyer has got it done in the postseason, Carr has not.

Meyer-coached teams have won their last four bowl games. He won two at Utah and both at Florida.

Carr’s team hasn’t had nearly the same success, losing four bowl games in a row and five of the last six.

Just underway.

SARA JANE MOORE FREED:

Sara Jane Moore, who took a shot at President Ford in a 1975 assassination attempt, was released from prison Monday.

Moore, 77, had served about 30 years of a life sentence when she was released from the federal prison in Dublin, east of San Francisco, the Federal Bureau of Prisons said.

She was 40 feet away from Ford outside a hotel in San Francisco when she fired a shot at him on Sept. 22, 1975. As she raised her .38-caliber revolver, Oliver Sipple, a disabled former Marine standing next to her, pushed up her arm as the gun went off, and the bullet flew over Ford’s head by several feet.

Moore basically appeared to be a complete lunatic who was convinced the Conservatives had declared war on the Liberals. At least there aren’t any people like that around today.

UPDATE: I didn’t realize that Sipple, the disable Marine who was credited with saving Ford’s life, had been born in Detroit. He had been wounded in Vietnam in 1968 and suffered from a number of physical and psychological problems for the rest of his life. Shortly after the attempted assassination, Sipple was outed as a homosexual.

UPDATE 2: Much more here, including a public defender’s assessment of Moore’s reasoning:

“…Her conduct was sort of a shopping list: ‘Take my son to school, shoot the president, pick up my son from school.”

UPDATE 3: More at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Strib, including:

In recent interviews, Moore said she regretted her actions, saying she was blinded by her radical political views and convinced that the government had declared war on the left.

“I was functioning, I think, purely on adrenaline and not thinking clearly. I have often said that I had put blinders on and I was only listening to what I wanted to hear,” she said a year ago in an interview with KGO-TV.

And this in the LA Times:

At the St. Francis, where Ford had come close to dying violently, visitors sometimes gaze up at a quarter-sized gouge on an exterior wall near the north entrance.

It’s said to be the spot where Moore’s bullet ricocheted — a notion confirmed by a hotel employee who asked not to be identified.

“There hasn’t been a reason to do anything with it,” the employee said, acknowledging that tourists with a bent for American history sometimes stand on the sidewalk eyeing the spot, six feet or so above what is now a Bank of America automated teller machine.

KALAMAZOO: Four people were shot, one seriously, at a house party shortly after 1 a.m. New Year’s Day. No other details appear available at this time.

Then there’s this: KALAMAZOO COUNTY Homicides spiked in ‘07. 13 are the most since 2000. Last year saw only 5. 11 of the killings were in the city.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, MICHIGAN! Let’s hope 2008 is a little better than 2007.