November 28, 2022

Michigan Has Turned the Ohio State Rivalry On Its Head

Michigan Has Turned the Ohio State Rivalry On Its Head

BY ALEX KIRSHNER
NOV 26, 20225:37 PM


(Slate) Since around the turn of the century, Ohio State has dominated Michigan in The Game, college football’s most marketable and arguably most intense rivalry. Somewhere in the course of winning 15 times in 16 years, and denying Michigan any victories in Columbus since 2000, the Buckeyes cultivated not just a competitive advantage, but a psychological one. This manifested time and again on the field, when Michigan looked to have things in hand against Ohio State and then let them slip away inexplicably. (Granted, in many other years, Ohio State just romped.) But it also manifested hundreds of miles away from the field, in the collective psyche of everyone who cares about Michigan. The Wolverines’ inability to beat the Buckeyes in football made all of their fans miserable about college sports on a near-permanent basis. Futility in The Game denied Michigan fans the ability to believe that anything good was possible.

Saturday confirmed times have changed: Michigan 45, Ohio State 23, in front of about 107,000 mostly infuriated Midwesterners at the Horseshoe in Columbus. In an all-unbeaten clash, Michigan looked out of its element in the first quarter but gradually gained steam. By the closing ticks of the clock, it was the Buckeyes who were melting down.

This one made two wins in a row for Michigan in the only game that matters. It was a different story than in 2021, when Michigan came out with a particular agenda and imposed its will in a uniformed fashion all afternoon. But it seemed possible that was a one-year anomaly, and Ohio State would show up on Saturday having adjusted its plan and gotten itself into a position to nuke the Wolverines out of the College Football Playoff. Instead, Michigan spent the afternoon doing what Ohio State has spent most of the last 20 years doing to Michigan: squeezing the will to live out of its rival, and quite possibly killing its national championship dreams in the process.

....(snip)....

Saturday’s Michigan win promises to be even more demoralizing for the medium-sized country otherwise known as “Ohio State fandom.” This Buckeyes loss came about differently because of how out of its depth Ohio State (and its coaching staff in particular) looked when it had a chance to win. Ohio State acted like Michigan used to act, and the Wolverines were happy to take the favors and cruise to victory. ................(more)

https://slate.com/culture/2022/11/michigan-win-ohio-state-rivalry-turned-upside-down.html

November 28, 2022

Whistleblowers: Oxford school district hiding the truth about mass shooting

(Detroit Free Press) Saying they can't keep quiet anymore, two former Oxford school board members plan to make public information that they allege shows the district is lying to victims' families and the public about its role in the mass shooting that left four students dead and seven others injured.

Specifically, the whistleblowers allege that Oxford school officials have led the community to believe that they did everything right but a bad thing still happened, when the facts show that the officials could have prevented the tragedy.

Those facts, the former board members maintain, have been withheld from the public. And they can't keep quiet anymore, they say, stressing they want to share information that they previously were told they could not disclose.

'They failed to take action to prevent it'

The whistleblowers are former school board President Tom Donnelly and Treasurer Korey Bailey — both of whom recently resigned out of frustration over the district's handling of the shooting investigation.

"This has gone on long enough. I couldn’t take the Oxford stonewalling and lack of accountability any more," Bailey said in a news release Sunday. “They never thought a school shooting would happen here and they failed to take action to prevent it.” ............(more)

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/oakland/2022/11/27/whistleblowers-say-oxford-school-lying-about-deadly-mass-shooting/69680396007/

November 27, 2022

3 things to know as Michigan moves to certify 2022 midterm election results

(Detroit Free Press) Election Day in Michigan may have been weeks ago, but one more piece of business is left before its results can become official — the Board of State Canvassers must canvass and certify the election.

The board has been around for close to 175 years, but its role in state elections can often fly under the radar. Here's a quick primer on the board's purpose and what we can expect at Monday's meeting:

What is the Board of State Canvassers?

The Board of State Canvassers is a four-member body comprised of two Republicans and two Democrats, all appointed by the governor. Canvassers serve staggered, four-year terms.

Board members are tasked with canvassing and certifying, or making official, statewide elections, which is what's on their agenda for Monday. The board also has other duties, including conducting recounts for state-level offices when necessary, canvassing petitions for statewide candidates and ballot initiatives, adopting the ballot language for such petition initiatives and approving which electronic voting systems can be used in Michigan. ......................(more)

https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2022/11/27/michigans-board-of-canvassers-meeting-what-to-know/69676586007/

November 27, 2022

Why the mainstream news media got its midterms election coverage so wrong

Why the mainstream news media got its midterms election coverage so wrong
Today's news media simply refuses to recognize that the story of democracy in America is changing

By SOPHIA A. MCCLENNEN
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 26, 2022 7:30PM (EST)


(Salon) At 7:19 a.m. on November 10, when the Senate had already been called for the Democrats but votes were still being counted for the House, the Georgia Senate and several gubernatorial races, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) tweeted, "I am sure our enemies are quacking in their boots while we are still over here trying to count ballots."

Greene is notable for her typos and gaffes. But the quacking — rather than quaking — in their boots tweet drew quite the twitter mockdown, including this memorable rejoinder: "Quacking? You're a ducking moron."

Later, when MAGA election denier Kari Lake lost the Arizona gubernatorial race, she tweeted, "Arizonans know BS when they see it." Scores of Twitter replies decided to take that as her concession, especially March for Our Lives founder, David Hogg, who replied, "Explains why you're not the next Governor."

....(snip)....

So no, the story of the MAGA GOP loss is not really a story about losers, but rather about a party that has lost touch with reality. Instead, the real losers in the midterm election are the mainstream media, which not only blew its coverage of the election but also proved once and for all that it is more interested in getting attention than covering the news.

Let's start with the myriad headlines leading into Election Day which anticipated, wrongly, that the GOP would win, and did so with a steady stream of hyperbole and exaggeration. CNN referred to the "bottom dropping out" for Democrats, a fast-building "Republican wave" and Democrat's "nightmare scenario on election eve." And that was just CNN. In a Washington Post column on how the media messed up their coverage, Dana Milbank observed that along with CNN, The Post, the New York Times, Axios and Politico ran equally absurd headlines.

The disparity between the news coverage and what actually happened on Election Day even led the White House to claim that the press had "egg on their faces, yet again." .........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/11/26/why-the-mainstream-news-media-got-its-midterms-coverage-so/

November 26, 2022

Watching an episode of 'Planet Earth' on BBC America.....

..... and learning that there are only an estimated 40 Amur (Siberian) leopards left in the wild. It's giving me the sads. I'm not a particularly big fan of zoos, but it might be the only place we'll see some species alive in the near future.

November 26, 2022

Amazon Workers Walk Off the Job on the Biggest Shopping Day of the Year

(Rolling Stone) Amazon warehouse workers have walked off the job on one of the busiest shopping days of the year to demand higher wages and better working conditions from the online retail giant.

The strike was organized under “Make Amazon Pay,” an international campaign coordinated among trade unions, climate justice groups, and labor rights organizations. It calls upon Amazon to increase worker pay and stop busting warehouse employees’ efforts to unionize, as well as improve its environmental impact. Friday’s actions include walkouts, strikes, and forms of protest from thousands of Amazon warehouse workers across 40 countries and five continents on Black Friday, the unofficial kick off of the holiday shopping season.

“For workers and consumers, the price of everything is going up,” the campaign website states. “And for everyone, the global temperature is rising and our planet is under stress. But instead of supporting its workers, communities and the planet, Amazon is squeezing every last drop it can.” The campaign calls upon Amazon to pay its share of global income taxes, which it did not pay in Europe in 2021 and has never paid in the United States — even as its received many additional tax credits from governments as it built its network of warehouses. .............(more)

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/amazon-workers-walk-off-black-friday-protest-1234636750/

November 26, 2022

Who missed Thanksgiving dinner this year? Everybody who got shot

Who missed Thanksgiving dinner this year? Everybody who got shot
We've had more than 600 mass shootings in America this year, including 35 so far this month. We're No. 1!

By LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV
Columnist
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 26, 2022 8:00AM (EST)


(Salon) There have been 607 mass shootings so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, the most authoritative source. It defines a mass shooting as an event when at least four people are shot, excluding the shooter. That we even have such a thing as a "Gun Violence Archive" is a black mark against this country which can never be erased. We are the only country in the world with more guns than people, the only country in the world with an excess of 30,000 gun deaths each year, the only country in the world with mass killings like the one that happened earlier this year in Uvalde, Texas, when a teenage gunman fatally shot 19 students and two teachers at the Robb Elementary School, wounding 17 others.

So far this year, 639 people have been killed in mass shootings. More than 2,500 were wounded, according to records kept by CNN. During the month of November alone, there have been 35 mass shootings, with a total of 185 people shot with a firearm, and 49 of them killed.

As we count our blessings that we were not among the dead during this Thanksgiving week, let's have a look at the mass shootings that killed 45 people during this month alone, sending 140 to the hospital.

Nov. 1: In East St. Louis, Illinois, two people were killed and three were wounded when a fight broke out after an argument.

In Baltimore, three adults and a teenager were wounded in a nighttime shooting.

In Denver, one person was killed and five were wounded in a drive-by shooting. ..........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/11/26/missed-thanksgiving-dinner-this-year-everybody-got-shot/

November 25, 2022

Transforming Ourselves to Transform the World

Transforming Ourselves to Transform the World
Five activists share how shifting their relationships with their own bodies helped them build community.

NICOLE FROIO
12 MIN READ
NOV 21, 2022


(YES! Magazine) The concept of cuerpo-territorio (“body-territory”) around which the Xinka women in Guatemala organize themselves recognizes the interconnectedness between human bodies and all other living beings.

Within this Indigenous philosophy, the body is understood as disputed political territory that is part of the land that has been colonized, exploited, and destroyed by a capitalist, patriarchal system. Both individual and collective subjugation are important pieces of this concept: The colonization of land is interconnected to the hierarchies placed on our bodies to maintain capitalism.

Our intersections—from gender and racialization to (dis)ability and sexual orientation—are what define our place in the hierarchy of capitalism. These predefined roles become even stricter in times of crisis. Take the COVID-19 pandemic—not only did it disconnect us from our communities and reveal the fragility of our bodies, but it also continues to disproportionately impact the most vulnerable among us. But what happens when we step into our autonomy and shed the trappings of heteropatriarchal capitalism? What is the ripple effect of that autonomy in the communities we’re a part of?

....(snip)....

For Sonya Renée Taylor, author, activist, and founder of The Body Is Not an Apology, radical self-love is essential to achieving collective liberation. Originally a renowned slam poet, Taylor began to delve into body-liberation work in 2010 during a conversation with her friend Natasha. Natasha, who has cerebral palsy, was hesitant to ask her sexual partner to use a condom. She thought she couldn’t demand something from her sexual partners and that she should feel lucky to be having sex in the first place. Taylor responded quickly: “Your body is not an apology. You do not use it to say ‘Sorry for my disability.’”

In July 2010, Taylor turned the phrase into a slam poem that reads, in part: “The body is not an apology. Let it not be common as oil, ash, or toilet. Let it not be small as gravel, stain, or teeth. Let it not be mountain when it is sand. Let it not be ocean when it is grass. Let it not be shaken, flattened, or razed in contrition.” In 2011, Taylor posted a photo of herself on Facebook with a caption about society’s insistence that she make her fat, Black body smaller. “For this one camera flash, I am unashamed, unapologetic,” she wrote. People began sharing their own photos, showing off their racialized, disabled, queer bodies without shame. That was the birth of The Body Is Not an Apology, a global digital media and education company that Taylor says has now reached tens of millions across 140 countries who seek to learn about identity, liberation, and social justice. ..............(more)

https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/bodies/2022/11/21/transforming-ourselves-to-transform-the-world

November 24, 2022

Sarah, don't go away mad. Sarah, just go away.

May we never hear another dumb word that falls from your lips.

November 24, 2022

Spying on the Queen of Soul

Spying on the Queen of Soul
For 40 years, the FBI surveilled Aretha Franklin and other Black ‘radicals.’ We got the recently declassified files.

By Jenn Dize and Afeni Evans on Wed, Nov 23, 2022 at 4:00 am




(Detroit Metro Times) It took four years for the FBI to release its file on Aretha Franklin. Requested via the Freedom of Information Act in 2018, the heavily redacted documents are filled with racist language and extreme surveillance of the late Detroit-based singer and activist. Based on the agency’s admissions, Franklin never did anything wrong. The overstepping surveillance revealed has shocked the nation, but strikes particularly close to home for Michiganders.

With some documents newly declassified earlier this year, the 270-page file spans the years 1967 to 2007 and shows how the agency subjected the Queen of Soul to the sort of surveillance and interference that was placed on contemporaries like Martin Luther King Jr., Fred Hampton, and Angela Davis via an FBI program designed to, among other things, infiltrate, surveil, and disrupt the civil rights movement — and Black lives.

First obtained by this journalist and published in Rolling Stone, documents in the files are written with a clear distrust of the Queen of Soul by the agency, show intense surveillance of her movements and infiltration of Black spaces, and use racist terminology throughout. The FBI seemed intent on linking Franklin to “militant Black power,” radicalism, extremism, and racial violence, according to the documents. Some are questioning how much has changed in the agency’s tactics in recent years, based on available evidence.

....(snip)....

Detroit’s shining star for civil rights

Aretha Franklin was part of Detroit’s fabric from a young age, and quickly became an international sensation. The late Congressman John Lewis, who passed away two years following Franklin’s 2018 death, said, “If it hadn’t been for Aretha — and others, but particularly Aretha — the Civil Rights Movement would have been a bird without wings.” It was this notoriety as a popular Black singer, along with Franklin’s monetary and physical support of the civil rights movement, that seemingly raised the FBI’s suspicion.

Of her 1967 track “Respect,” Franklin wrote in her book Aretha: From These Roots, “It [reflected] the need of a nation, the need of the average man and woman in the street, the businessman, the mother, the fireman, the teacher — everyone wanted respect. It was also one of the battle cries of the civil rights movement. The song took on monumental significance.” ....................(more)

https://www.metrotimes.com/music/spying-on-the-queen-of-soul-31666094