Mark Maynard | 2006 | June

the ypsi mayoral debate: date set, broadcast planned, web person needed

By Mark | June 21, 2006

Things are moving forward with regard to the Ypsi Mayoral Debate I’ve been talking about. We’ve confirmed it for EMU’s McKinney Union on the evening of July 27, and we have a commitment from our local NPR affiliate, WEMU, to cover the event and play extended excerpts over the following days… I was told by WEMU’s News Director that they used to have McKinney Union wired so that they could do live broadcasts from there fairly easily, but that those lines were torn out during recent renovations. Doing a live broadcast now would require new ISDN lines to be installed, and, given current restraints on spending, it doesn’t look as though that’s a possibility. So, what this means is that we’ll have a truncated version on-air the following day, and a podcast of the entire event available on our website – assuming that we can manage to get a website launched… Which brings me to our problem.

Posted in Ypsilanti | 2 Comments

dick cheney, the most cocks sucked in an hour, and my high school reunion

By Mark | June 20, 2006

Do you want to see the kids I went to high school with 20 years ago in New Jersey? I’m flipping through their old photos and current bios right now, as I sit here watching the new “Frontline” on Dick “the dark one” Cheney. The combination of hideous mid-80’s fashion and the prolonged exposure to our Vile President has me feeling like I want to go crawl into a dark hole and start pulling armfuls of dirt in over me… And, it doesn’t help that I just leaned (via my webstats program) that this site is the second thing to come up when searching “the most cocks sucked in an hour”, and the fourth thing returned when searching for “nude photos of actor Steve Guttenberg”…. No, even if I wanted to, there’s no way I could face my fellow graduates of Newton High at the upcoming reunion.

Posted in Mark's Life | 12 Comments

branford snell, g.m. in china, the conspiracy against mass transportation and compressed air, flyweel cars

By Mark | June 20, 2006

Being antisocial by nature, I never talk to the people seated next to me on airplanes. As that’s the case, I rarely meet interesting people people. (I certianly don’t meet them very often in my day-to-day life.) Linette flew next to Otto Preminger’s former secretary once… The following letter comes from my friend Dave in Seattle. It’s got me wondering how many interesting people I’ve sat next to over the years, and how many great opportunities I’ve missed. (It’s also got me pissed at GM.)

…I was out in DC last week for an installation. On my flight home (the first leg of the flight was into LA) I ended up sitting next to a guy named Bradford Snell. We got to talking and shared a bit of info about what we do. He said that he was a writer and was working on a history of General Motors. We talked about compressed air cars and flywheel power storage. I made the case for both of them and criticized the battery option on hybrids. He agreed with me, but was not familiar with the CAT. He did know about the flywheel technology. There are fleets of buses in Switzerland powered by them apparently.

We talked about GM and China. He said that his friend Ralph Nader had gone to China to try and convince them to invest in mass transit. He said China currently has 100 cities with populations over 10 million (that in itself is pretty scary.) and that they are quickly becoming the biggest market for cars, which will lead to all the associated problems. Nader was told while he was there that GM had been there 6 weeks earlier and had convinced the Chinese government that car manufacturing provides a base for large economic development. GM is happy as hell about this for many reasons: no regulations to deal with, free land and subsidized factory building, cheap skilled labor, huge market, etc. China does not want to deal with Toyota because they are a Japanese company, so this provides an even greater incentive to GM. “Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.”

As we talked, I mentioned the GM Streetcar Conspiracy. Well, apparently he was the government attorney that presented information/evidence to the Senate in 1974 that painted the picture of GM systematically destroying the trolley lines in many American cities. The Senate was conducting hearings because the energy crisis at that time had many people angry. They wanted to know what led up to the current situation. So, it turns out that Bradford Snell is at the heart of the GM Streetcar Conspiracy. How strange is that?

I asked him later in the conversation if he knew of Preston Tucker, and he said that Francis Coppola hired him to research the SEC hearings for his movie “Tucker”.

As I was getting on the plane for the second leg of the flight home I noticed Ben Stein sitting in first class. He would have made for a great conversation too, but the only thing that I could think of to say was “Bueller.” So, I said nothing. I would have loved to talk to him about working for Nixon.

Posted in Alternative Energy | 3 Comments

mark maynard’s official flag burning kits

By Mark | June 19, 2006

I have this idea to manufacture and sell “Flag Burning Kits” on Ebay, but, before I do anything about it, I need to find out whether or not it’s illegal to send lighter fluid through the mail… Can one of you without a job please look into that for me?

And, here, because I’m too lazy to post anything original on the subject of the asinine constitutional amendment against flag desecration, is a clip from Think Progress:

The U.S. Congress is closer than ever to passing a constitutional amendment that would criminalize desecration of the U.S. flag. If successful, it will mark the first time in 214 years that the Bill of Rights has been restricted by a constitutional amendment, and will place the United States among a select group of nations that have banned flag desecration, including Cuba, China, Iran, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein. The amendment has already been approved by the necessary two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives, and last week it passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on a near-party line 11-7 vote. Now, aided by a handful of Democrats, the amendment has gathered 66 votes in favor, just one shy of passage. “Whether advocates can find the 67th vote to send the flag amendment to the states for ratification remains unclear.” The Senate vote is expected next week. Take a stand now by signing up with Veterans Defending the Bill of Rights.

Defacing a flag is an act that most Americans find offensive and outrageous. It is also “an act of protected speech under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution,” as established by the Supreme Court in Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989), and reaffirmed in U.S. v. Eichman, 496 U.S. 310 (1990). It takes no courage to stand for freedom of speech for the views with which we agree. Rather, favoring freedom of speech means favoring freedom of speech precisely for those views one finds offensive and outrageous. As Colin Powell has said of the First Amendment, affirming his opposition to a flag-burning amendment, “I would not amend that great shield of democracy to hammer a few miscreants. The flag will be flying proudly long after they have slunk away.”

And, if you’re a designer who’s got a few extra minutes on his or her hands, I’d also appreciate an image to accompany my Ebay auction… I’m thinking that it should linclude an American flag, a box of matches, a can of lighter fluid, and, maybe, a ski mask… What am I forgetting? Maybe a framed copy of the Bill of Rights to stand in front of when you light it up? Anything else?

Oh… and it’s probably also worth noting that while we’re occupying ourselves with criminally foolish nonesense like this, we’re losing the war on terror, the situation in Iraq is getting much worse (despite what we’re bring told), and the North Koreans are fueling a rocket that could potentially reach the coast of California.