Last Call For Another Hat In The Ring, Con't

Former GOP SC Governor and Trump UN Ambassador Nikki Haley announced her entry into the 2024 race to the thunderous nothingness of near universal derision and apathy.

 

Haley has about as much chance of being president as, say, Bobby Jindal. What's Jindal up to these days? Nobody cares.

 

How do I know Haley is doomed? Sippy Cupp thinks she has a real chance, folks!

In her video announcement on Tuesday Haley boasted of the need for “generational change,” an obvious knock on both Trump and President Biden’s ages — Haley is 51, indeed a generation behind both.

That distinction will likely serve her well in creating contrast with her former boss, now a septuagenarian Florida retiree, who’s often sounded very much like a sitcom character out of the 1950s, bemoaning today’s women for straying from the Donna Reed archetype. His obsession with a woman’s place — in the kitchen, doing the dishes and cooking dinner — is well-documented.

Haley’s broken all of the regressive stereotypes Trump routinely leans on to stoke the grievances of his right-wing base. At 38 she wasn’t in the kitchen but busy becoming the youngest governor in the country, and South Carolina’s first female and minority governor. Her family hails from a country Trump has called “filthy,” and he’s repeatedly used a fake Indian accent to imitate Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and an imaginary Indian call center representative.

Her impressive and inspiring immigrant story flies in the face of Trump’s penchant for casting immigrants as “criminals” and “animals” from “sh*thole countries,” undeserving of basic human dignity.

And Haley was raised in the Sikh faith before converting to Christianity as an adult — Trump has repeatedly insulted the Sikh community, mistaking Sikhs for Muslims, throwing Sikhs out of his rallies, retweeting racist and bigoted memes, and conflating Sikhs with Islamic terrorism.

All of this is sure to come up as Trump takes her on as a competitor. If his past performances with women and minorities is prologue, he’ll likely zero in on her looks as he did with Carly Fiorina and her un-American-ness as he did with Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio in 2016. He even went after Ben Carson’s Seventh-Day Adventist faith.

But her poise and measured speaking style are also a contrast to Trump and his preferred approach of ranting and raving, uncontrollable blurting and late-night Twitter tirades. In her Tuesday announcement she seemed to send him a preemptive warning, saying, “I don’t put up with bullies. And when you kick back, it hurts them more if you’re wearing heels.”

All of her background and bio aside, she’s a formidable candidate — a smart and skilled retail politician who’s very popular in her home state of South Carolina. If she can do well there in the Republican primary she’ll be off to a promising start.

 

DeSantis will simply call her "woke". And Trump is busy dreaming of mass executions of those people. 

Republican primary voters want blood and punishment of anyone who isn't a Republican primary voter. Trump and/or DeSantis will give them what they want. Haley will be gone by this time next year, if not much sooner.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

The grand jury evidence in the Fulton County, GA investigation will be made public...well, the parts that aren't directly related to ongoing possible prosecution by County DA Fani Willis of Trump and his inner circle for election interference in 2020, anyway.

 

A judge in Fulton County, Georgia, will make public some parts of a report from a special grand jury that investigated Donald Trump’s actions after the 2020 election in the state, but not specific charging recommendations.

In his order on Monday, Judge Robert C.I. McBurney said that the special grand jury’s introduction and conclusion as well as concerns the panel had about witnesses lying under oath will made be public on Thursday. Some of the information in those sections still may be redacted, the judge noted.

Prosecutors in Georgia have aggressively investigated whether Trump or any of his associates broke the law while trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat in the closely contested state.

The special grand jury, barred from issuing indictments, penned the highly anticipated final report as a culmination of its seven months of work, which included interviewing 75 witnesses from Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham.

No one has been charged in the case yet, and another grand jury would make those decisions now that the special grand jury has presented its findings.

Other findings by the special grand jury won’t be public yet – particularly the parts where the report makes recommendations about potential charges. That’s because some of the people named in those recommendations may not have appeared in grand jury proceedings so far.

“Here, however, for anyone named in the special purpose grand jury’s final report who was not afforded the opportunity to appear before the grand jury, none of those due process rights has been satisfied,” McBurney wrote in the eight-page order on Monday.

“And for those who did appear – willingly or not – only the right to be heard (although without counsel or rebuttal) was protected,” McBurney added.

A media coalition, which includes CNN, is seeking for the full report to be made public.

 

We'll see later this week what that evidence is, but supposedly part of the findings include that several witnesses may have lied to the jury and perjured themselves, and if that's true, the charges are going to come quickly.

We'll see if those charges include those for Trump himself.  Keep in mind, the moment Willis indicts him, Brian Kemp and the Georgia GOP will go directly after her, and almost certainly try to impeach and remove her from office. 

 

There's going to be a cost to not charge Trump, but there will be one for charging him, too.

Welcome To Gunmerica, Con't

Another school shooting, this time on the campus of Michigan State University.

 

A suspect has died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound after a mass shooting at Michigan State University that left three people dead and five others injured Monday evening, police said.

“There is no longer a threat to campus,” Interim Deputy Chief Chris Rozman said. “We believe there to only be one shooter in this incident and there is no longer a need to shelter in place on campus.”

The shooting, which spanned two different campus locations, prompted an hourslong shelter-in-place order as hundreds of officers from multiple agencies converged on the campus to search for the gunman.

The first report of shots fired came at 8:18 p.m. ET from Berkey Hall, an academic building on the northern end of campus. Officers responded to the building within minutes and found several shooting victims, including two who died, Rozman said.

The incident unfolded starting at 8:18 p.m. ET at Berkey Hall, where several shooting victims were found, Rozman said. Immediately after, shots were fired nearby at the Michigan State University Union Building, he said.

“Police and emergency responders acted quickly. We tended to the victims at both of those scenes,” Rozman said.

Two of those who died were at Berkey Hall, and the third was at the MSU Union, according to Rozman.

At least five people were taken to a hospital, all of them in critical condition, according to Rozman. Police have not disclosed whether the victims included students.

Hours later, the suspect “was contacted by law enforcement off campus” and “it does appear that that suspect has died from a self inflicted gunshot wound,” Rozman reported.

“This truly has been a nightmare that we are living tonight,” Rozman said. “We are relieved to no longer have an active threat on campus, while we realize that there is so much healing that will need to take place after this.”

Rozman said it remains unknown what motivated the shooting.

 

The difference this time is that Michigan Democrats now control the state legislature along with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and more than just "thoughts and prayers" will be forthcoming.

 

As authorities reconvened in the wake of a mass shooting at Michigan State University that left three dead and five critically injured, elected officials made a pledge for response.

“As parents we tell our kids, it’s gonna be okay. We say that all the time,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said, her voice full of emotion. “But the truth is words are not good enough. We must act and we will.”

Whitmer said she spoke with U.S. President Joe Biden and “he pledged his support and the thoughts of an entire nation.”

All of the victims in the shooting were MSU students, Deputy MSU police chief Chris Rozman said.

U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Lansing, represented Oxford High School when that school endured a mass shooting a little more than one year ago, in November 2021.

“I am filled with rage that we have to have another press conference to talk about our children being killed in their schools,” Slotkin said. " I would say that you either care about protecting kids or you don’t. You either care about having an open honest conversation about what is going on in our society, or you don’t. But please don’t tell me you care about the safety of children. If you’re not willing to have a conversation about keeping them safe in a place that should be a sanctuary.”

Michigan Republicans ignored the Oxford shooting 16 months ago and that was a factor that helped to lose them the legislature. Now the Democrats are in charge. 

We'll see what legislation comes from this tragedy.