Mark Maynard | 2015 | October

Ypsilanti Immigration Interview: Jen Proctor

By Mark | October 25, 2015

I’m sure I’ll live to regret it, but I made the decision this weekend, after learning that filmmaker Jen Proctor had moved to Ypsi Township, to broaden the scope of the Ypsi Immigration Interview project to include people moving not only into the city proper, but also the surrounding environs… Could this be the start of a “One Ypsilanti” movement, or a fierce “Annex the Township” campaign? I’m not sure, but it’ll be interesting to see where it leads… Here, in the meantime, is my interview with Jen. Enjoy.

MARK: Let’s start with the easy stuff. What’s your name?

JEN: Jen Proctor!

MARK: Do you always use an exclamation mark after your last name?

JEN: No!

MARK: Where were you born?

JEN: San Francisco, California, though I grew up in Novato and San Rafael, just north of San Francisco.

MARK: Do you know the circumstances of your birth?

JEN: A pretty ordinary birth, as I understand it. My parents had to rush from where they were living in Marin County, over the Golden Gate Bridge, to get to the hospital. (Kaiser didn’t have a maternity ward in Marin at the time.) I was a little bit sickly, but everything was relatively normal. The girl who would become my childhood best friend was born 24 hours after I was. Our parents had met in lamaze class.

MARK: Do you ever worry that maybe you and another baby may have been switched at birth, and that you went home with the wrong family?

JEN: I totally worried about that as a kid, or that my parents had actually become pod people, and that I was the only human. But I’m way, way too much like my other family members to be a mistaken adoption, and I look way too much like them too. So, no dice.

MARK: How are you most like your parents? [right: Jen with her parents and little sister.]

JEN: I’m curious, and I’m a wanderer. It’s taken me many years to understand how they instilled those traits in me, or at least how I followed in their footsteps. We all love to explore, even if it’s just on a small scale, in the neighborhood. And I definitely find that I can be both taciturn, like my dad, and silly and outgoing, like my mom.

MARK: How are you least like your parents?

JEN: I think I’m a little more stable, for better or for worse. I like to live a simple life, and I don’t like to shop or accumulate stuff. But you can also give things up when you keep your life stable and simple – discovering new things, embarking on new projects, making new investments. So I try to continue to learn from the complexity of their lives, even as I strive to keep my own life a bit bare.

MARK: What kind of kid were you?

JEN: Oh man. I never thought to characterize myself as the kind of kid that I was! I was driven and creative but also painfully shy. (Later, as an adult, I figured out it was social anxiety, which I finally got treated. Lifechanging.) I was gregarious in my interests, with a love of movies and moviemaking from an early age, and endlessly curious, but my gregariousness often hit a wall with my shyness, so I was a pretty temperamental kid. I have also always had a rebellious streak, which I channeled into writing and video production. When I read about how our brains aren’t fully developed until we’re 25, a lot of things start to make more sense about my childhood and adolescence!

MARK: What’s the first film you were ever passionate about?

JEN: Like a lot of kids, the films that lit fires under me, and made me want to be something bigger than I was, were the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises. They made me want to be a hero, and they made me understand the power of cinematic storytelling to make you want to BE something. Of course, as a young girl, most of my heroes were men (I loved Princess Leia, but I really wanted to be Han or Luke), so a lot of what I study and teach now is about gender representation, and how we can do better to provide diverse and complicated heroes (and villains) in our films… But Winnie the Pooh was the first film to scare the hell out of me.

MARK: What was it… the honeypot getting stuck on his head?

JEN: No, getting stuck in Rabbit’s hole, and then Rabbit turning his rear into a face. There’s still something unpleasantly uncanny about it to me.

MARK: If you could go back in history and give one person a kiss on the cheek, who would it be?

JEN: Someone I think about a lot is Spalding Gray, the monologuist/performance artist and writer who took his own life about ten years ago. [I have his autograph.] He had a profound effect on my life as an adolescent, and I’d like to thank him for that. The sad thing is that I actually had the chance – I met him briefly when I was working for KUT, the National Public Radio station in Austin, where I lived in the late 90s/early aughts – and I could have given him that kiss then if it wouldn’t have been, you know, creepy and awkward. But I was also too shy to really express my gratitude and then a few years later, he was gone. That’s not really that far back in history, but his loss is one that I still feel.

MARK: I always feel bad when I think about him. But I think it’s selfish. As I understand it, he, like me, suffered from both OCD and depression. And, when I think about him, there’s always a fear that I could go the same way… I tend to personalize stuff.

JEN: I’m sorry to hear that. Yes, he had many troubles, and his mother committed suicide (following a similar pattern that he did) when he was young, which haunted him. [This article by late, wonderful Oliver Sacks about him offers some insight.] Certainly, I think I identified with his depression and struggles, but I think I also learned from his honesty and openness. I think it’s quite easy to see ourselves in someone like Spalding, and maybe there is an element of selfishness in that – but I like to think it’s also about compassion and empathy. He gave a lot of himself to the world.

MARK: What’s your first memory?

JEN: Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between memories and stories you’ve been told a million times. But I distinctly remember the joy of sitting in a metal cooking pot and spinning in our duplex kitchen when I was maybe four years old. I often wish I could get an adult-sized pot and spin. It was pure delight.

[above: Jen and her sister Anna probably somewhere on Mt. Tam, California. Hat crocheted by her father.]

MARK: Do I understand correctly that you have audio of your family from when you were a kid?

JEN: My dad recorded the family on cassette tape around Christmas every year. Those tapes are amazing. In many ways, sound is a far richer and more vivid way of evoking memories than video, and I treasure them. It’s amazing to hear the change in the sound of our voices over the years. [You can hear some of it here.]

MARK: And what brought you to Michigan?

JEN: In an unusual twist on the Michigan story, I came for a job, from graduate school at the University of Iowa. I taught at Grand Valley State University and lived in Grand Rapids for three years before moving Ypsi-side for my current job at UM-D.

MARK: What did you think about Grand Rapids? I’m a little conflicted. I like a lot about what’s going on, but I feel like I shouldn’t… Does that make sense?

JEN: That’s interesting, what do you not like? I really quite liked Grand Rapids, and thought the city was doing a nice job at revitalizing the downtown, which had otherwise been abandoned. I didn’t sense that it was doing it in a way that encouraged gentrification, but it could be different now. There is great food and a strong community that is really devoted to the city and grassroots work. I have many conflicting thoughts about ArtPrize – it’s been great in many ways for the city, but I have lots of thoughts about it as an artist. There’s also the influence of the DeVoses and Amway money that I find troubling, but I have to say they’ve invested incredibly in the arts there. [I also discovered, while in Grand Rapids, that I have a great-great-great-great grandmother buried near there.]

Pillow Fight from Jen Proctor on Vimeo.

[above: Grand Rapids pillow fight flash mob video by Jen Proctor, 2008.]

MARK: I like Grand Rapids for the same reasons you just shared. It’s just very white and conservative. And I don’t like that much of it was built on Amway riches. But people there really love their community. They support local businesses, and their local non-profits. We could learn a lot from them.

JEN: It is very white, though there is a strong Latino community that often goes unnoticed. The conservative culture there is real, but as I spent much of my time among artists and academics, I never felt dominated by it. I don’t know, I encountered a lot of active progressives there. And their community media center is truly fantastic.

MARK: And you just moved to the Township from Ann Arbor?

JEN: Yes, though we didn’t move far – about two miles. We used to live near the Pittsfield Village condo complex, right near the border of Ann Arbor and Ypsi.

MARK: I think you’re the first Pittsfield Township person I’ve ever interviewed as part of the Ypsi Immigration Interview project. I’m not sure what that means. Maybe I’m softening with age… I think, in part because there were a few libertarian folks from the Township who would leave comments on my site, I was inclined to see everyone outside the City as bitter, well-armed “small government” types who shared the opinion that, if not for affirmative action, the EPA, and women’s rights, they would have been hugely successful captains of industry. But, I guess I’m evolving. I mean the Township can’t be all bad, right?

JEN: Ha! Well, I’m honored. My experience of the Township so far is that it’s a bit of a confused place – my taxes go to the Township, the schools and library are Ann Arbor, but the mailing address is Ypsi. So it’s kind of a nebulous place with no clear identity, which I’m kind of into. That’s interesting to hear about the libertarian angle – I haven’t encountered it yet in person, but maybe I’ll try posting a bunch of “Feel the Bern” signs in my yard and see what happens. Generally, though, my neighbors have been lovely and welcoming and really look out for each other, and that’s the kind of neighborhood I want.

MARK: Can we trust you? [It’s nothing personal, I’m just required to ask all people moving to Ypsi from Ann Arbor.]

JEN: You know, the thing about living right on the edge between A2 and Ypsi is that I was often faced with a choice when I left the house: left or right, east or west, red pill or blue pill. And more often than not I went Ypsi-ward. I don’t know if that was the red pill or blue pill, but I definitely identify more with Ypsi. Before I moved to this part of the state, people told me Ann Arbor was kind of alternative, kind of hippie, kind of crunchy, but Ypsi was punk rock. It’s that rebellious streak again, I think – Ypsi feels like a place that talks back, that scraps, that does its own thing, and that has opportunities for making it happen. I’m excited to dig more into that community. So I think that’s a “yes.”

MARK: What do you do for a living?

JEN: I teach film and video in the Journalism and Screen Studies program at UM-Dearborn. That’s another reason for the Township move – I commute to Dearborn, while my husband works at the main campus in Ann Arbor. Ironically, his bus commute is now longer than my car commute. We would have considered moving farther into Ypsi if it weren’t for the insanely long bus ride into Ann Arbor.

MARK: And what kind of films do you make?

JEN: I mostly make little personal experimental films that hardly anybody sees, ha! But I also work in interactive documentary and video installation and I work with found footage quite a lot. My most successful recent film is a remake of Bruce Conner’s seminal 1958 found footage film “A Movie“, where I used YouTube and LiveLeak videos instead of newsreels and novelty films. Despite being 50 years apart, it shows that as a society we’re still obsessed with violence on a global scale, but also still delight in videos of people riding funny bikes and having accidents on waterskis.

A Movie by Jen Proctor from Jen Proctor on Vimeo.

[above: A Movie by Jen Proctor.]

MARK: Are you actively working on any projects right now?

JEN: I’ve been capturing a hell of a lot of episodes of Jeopardy! for a project. I’m going to be working with those wonderful awkward sequences at the beginning when the contestants smile painfully at the camera as they’re being introduced. I hope to get started on that before the end of the year.

MARK: What would you like for people to know about you?

JEN: Oh hell. Um. Hmm. I’m eager to participate in/develop more of a filmmaking community in Ypsi/A2. Donald Harrison, who also just recently moved to Ypsilanti, has made some strides in doing that, but it would be great to have a more regular gathering or event. So if anyone’s interested, hit me up! I also love cats, and I love Star Wars, and best of all I love Star Wars cats. I don’t know. What should I share? [right: Jen with a Star Wars cat cake produced by Sweet Heather Anne.]

MARK: What would you like to accomplish over the next five years?

JEN: I’d like to produce a more significant, long-term filmmaking project with social impact. Most of my projects are short and small, which I enjoy, but I’m ready to sink my teeth into something more significant, once I can find the right story. I’ve actually thought for some time about a documentary about the Paranormal Convention that takes place in Sault Ste. Marie every year. It might sound light and fluffy, but I think there are actually really fascinating issues to be examined around the ideas of ghost hunting, and perceived hauntings, and it could be an interesting entry point for exploring what it means to live in the Upper Peninsula.

MARK: Please finish the sentence: Community is important because _____.

JEN: …it gives our lives meaning, and allows us to participate in creating meaning for others. In a community, we are bigger than the sum of our parts, and as such, we can make stuff HAPPEN.

[special offer: I’m not sure how she’ll do it, but Jen says that if anyone in Ypsi watches her new 30 minute textual film all they way through in one go, she’ll send them a cookie!]

[Still wondering why people are moving to Ypsi? Check out the Ypsilanti Immigration Interview archive.]

Posted in Special Projects, Uncategorized | Tagged A Movie, Amway, Annex the Township, art films, Art Prize, birthday cakes, Bruce Conner, cats, depression, Dick DeVos, Donald Harrison, Film, ghost hunting, ghosts, Grand Rapids, haunting, Jen Proctor, Jeopardy, One Ypsilanti, Paranormal Convention, Pittsfield Township, San Francisco, Sault Ste. Marie, Spalding Gray, Star Wars, Sweet Heather Anne, Winnie the Pooh, Ypsi immigration interview | 23 Comments

Beal Construction Services is issued five “serious” workplace safety violations in wake of Thompson Block death

By Mark | October 24, 2015

According to the Ann Arbor News, the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration (MIOSHA) have completed the review of Beal Construction Services that was initiated with the death last May of Jeremy “Jake” Burd, a construction worker who lost his life in the basement of Ypsilanti’s historic Thompson Block after the floor above him collapsed. According to published reports, Beal Construction Services, as a result of this formal inquiry, was issued five citations for “serious” violations of the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Act, each of which carries with it a fine of $7,000, which is apparently the maximum for violations that are not found to be “willful.” As of right now, the family of Jake Burd, as I understand it, has not filed suit against Beal Construction. Given these recent findings by MIOSHA, however, one would assume a wrongful death case is imminent… The following clip concerning the MIOSHA findings, comes from the Ann Arbor News.

…A “serious” violation is determined if there is substantial probability that death or serious physical harm could result and that the employer knew, or should have known, of the hazard.

The five citations describe a construction site that was not properly prepared, inspected or cleared including during the time when Burd was killed. The citation and notification of penalty does not say if the violations were found immediately after Burd’s death or not…

Neil Miller, the lawyer representing Burd’s family, said the citations show that Beal Construction was at fault and that Burd’s death could have been avoided.

“The MIOSHA citations indicate a total failure top to bottom of management responsibility by the Thompson Block team,'” Miller said. “From the general partner of the Thompson Block project, Stewart Beal, to Stewart Beal as owner of Beal Construction Services and by JC Beal Construction and its principals as construction managers.

“The Beal Group markets themselves as consummate construction professionals, specializing in historic renovations. However, they demonstrated a total disregard of the potential for loss of life to laborers in the Thompson Block basement on May 11, 2015…

As I understand it, having talked some time ago with a coworker of Burd’s, who was working in the Thompson Block with him on May 11, the crew had been given the task of clearing the basement to make room for a small excavating machine, which was going to be brought in to lower the level of the dirt floor beneath the building. Having not been there, I cannot speak to what happened, but it sounds as though a decision was made, either by Burd, or by managers on the site, to knock out the support beams holding up the floor above, which, as it happens, was being used to store lumber, putting additional strain on the floor. (It had apparently been determined that these support beams needed to be removed so that the excavator could maneuver more easily through the basement.) Again, I don’t know for certain whose decision this was, but a decision was apparently made to knock out these existing support beams without first either moving the lumber being stored above, or finding an alternate way to reinforce the floor. Regardless of whose decision this was, Burd, as I understand it, knocked out one of these support beams with a sledgehammer, bringing the floor above him, as well as the lumber stacked on it, down on top of him, crushing him to death. While I didn’t have any reason to doubt the veracity of this story that I’d been told by Burd’s coworker, I made the decision not to share it at the time. While I knew readers of this site would find it interesting, I didn’t see how it would help anyone involved. [The man who contacted me had also told me that he was talking with MIOSHA investigators, so I knew that his story would eventually come out.] Now that the MIOSHA report has been issued, though, and seeing as how it seems to corroborate what I’d been told about he events leading up to Burd’s death, I don’t see any reason not to note this fact… The following comes from the Ann Arbor News article linked to above.

…Chief among the company’s MIOSHA violations is not clearing a floor that is to be demolished. The law requires that before a floor is demolished, debris and other materials shall be removed from the area and adjacent areas for a distance of not less than 20 feet.

The state found that employees had been stacking previously demolished wood and debris from a different work area onto the same floor currently being demolished. Debris was also not removed from the work area at a distance of not less than 20 feet…

The state also found Beal Construction did not follow proper demolition protocol of demolishing the site from the top down.

Manual demolition of structural components starts at the top of the structure and proceeds downward so that each level is completely dropped before the next lower wall and floor is dropped, except that if a connection portion is a different level, then that portion may be removed first.

That protocol was not followed, according to the state.

Proper shoring and bracing of the site was also not completed prior to demolition. Because the building had been damaged in a fire and by water, the building needed to be properly braced or shored before the start of manual demolition.

Beal Construction was also fined for not having a demolition engineering survey performed on the structure or equipment and for not performing an inspection to detect and remove hazards at the work site…

It’s an unfortunate situation all the way around. A man’s life was lost. A family lost its father. And an historic building that could have been an asset to Ypsilanti could very well now be demolished. It didn’t have to play out like this, but here we are. And it’s not over yet. I’m sure we’ll continue to experience the shockwaves associated with this project ripple though our community for years to come. Not only is there likely to be a protracted battle between Stewart Beal and our City Council over the future of the property, but I suspect we could see quite a bit of change in our local real estate market if Beal, one of our largest local property owners, is found liable for Burd’s death in a court case.

For those of you who might be interested in learning more about the Thompson Block’s recent history, here are links to the last several articles which have run on this site, in reverse chronological order.

May 11, 2015: Collapse within Ypsilanti’s Thompson Block leaves one worker dead

August 7, 2013: Stewart Beal on his plans to redevelop Ypsilanti’s Thompson Block with the help of small, local investors

April 28, 2011: Stewart Beal on his court case against Ypsilanti City Council

April 26, 2011: Yet another post entitled, “What’s up with the Thompson Block?”

August 10, 2010: Thompson block called safety hazard

April 29, 2010: Felony arson charges to be brought in Ypsi’s Thompson Block fire

March 1, 2010: Should Stewart Beal be given more than 6 months to figure out the Thompson Block?

December 15, 2009: The Thompson Block, and its effect on Depot Town retail

November 6, 2009: Ypsi City Manager gives Thompson Block owner 10 days

October 19, 2009: What’s going to happen with the Thompson block?

September 24, 2009: Photos (and video) from inside the Thompson Block

September 23, 2009: Ypsi’s Thompson block has burned down

February 14, 2009: Boarding up the windows of the Thompson Block

Posted in Local Business, Uncategorized, Ypsilanti | Tagged Beal Construction Services, Death, demolition, JC Beal, Jeremy "Jake" Burd, Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration, MIOSHA, Neil Miller, Stewart Beal, Thompson Block, workplace safety | 20 Comments

Is Benghazi finally coming back around to bite the Republicans in the ass?

By Mark | October 22, 2015

Approximately three weeks ago, on national television, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy made a huge mistake. He gloated that the Republican led House Select Committee on Benghazi had been successful, in that it had brought former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton down in the polls, making her a less viable candidate for the office of President. This intent on the part of Republicans, of course, was something that most of us had known all along, but folks on the right, up until now, hadn’t dared to say so in public. No, in public, they were always very clear to say that their repeated investigations weren’t politically motivated. When asked about their motivations, they’d just say that they were trying to get to the bottom of what had happened that night three years ago in Benghazi when U.S. diplomat Christopher Stevens and three other Americans lost their lives. And that’s why, according to the Republicans, we needed eight separate Congressional committees looking into Benghazi, spending millions of dollars each, when only two had looked into the 9/11 attacks on the United States that had claimed the lives of over 3,000.

To date, there have been 32 separate hearings on Benghazi, and not one has produced evidence of either an administrative wrongdoing or an intelligence failure. Yet, in spite of this, we continue with no end in sight, because it’s good politics. Hearings, as the Republicans know, create the impression of scandal, and, just as importantly, they allow you to subject your political adversaries to intensive questioning on items that could perhaps yield information of use to your party’s presidential candidate… Speaking of which, it came out today that Republicans have been using the authority of the House Select Committee on Benghazi to aggressively question Clinton associates about the operations of the Clinton Foundation.

But at today’s hearing, perhaps emboldened by the Kevin McCarthy’s recent comments concerning the purpose of this inquiry, Democrats took the offensive. As Clinton sat before the House Committee with a slight smile on her face, Representative Elijah Cummings, the ranking member of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, tore into his Republican colleagues, accusing them of abusing their power for no reason other than to “derail” Clinton’s presidential campaign. He even went so far as to suggest that the GOP should refund the American taxpayers the more than $20 million that has been spent to-date for what he referred to as their unsuccessful “fishing expedition.” [It’s worth noting that Cummings has been pushing back against the Republicans from the start. It’s just that, now, he’s actually getting traction in the media. And, as a result, his message is resonating more broadly.]

Understandably, the Republicans on the committee aren’t too happy about the shifting narrative around Benghazi. With each new article that comes out about these Benghazi hearings turning into an albatross around their necks, the Republicans circle their wagons a little tighter, and begin pushing back a little more desperately. While the conservative pundits today raised the volume of their attacks against the so-called “liberal media,” Republican members of Congress began accusing Clinton of… gasp… “politicizing” their hearing. [You’ve got to hand it to the Republicans… They’ve got balls.]

Clinton, for what it’s worth, is definitely making the most of this recent turn of events. She can sense the change in momentum, and she’s taking full advantage of it. A month ago, that idea that her campaign would be running a Benghazi-themed television ad would have been unthinkable, but that’s exactly what she’s doing. And it’s working. [Here’s her new ad.]

And all of the fact checking that’s been done this past three years is finally starting to break through in big way. Things that had pretty much been ignored in the past, like the book The Benghazi Hoax, are now suddenly very relevant.

Here, to give you a flavor of today’s hearing, is a clip from the transcript of Congressman Cummings’ opening statement, followed by the complete video.

…The Republican Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee conducted an extensive, bipartisan, two-year investigation and issued a detailed report. The Senate Intelligence Committee and the Senate Homeland Security Committee also conducted bipartisan investigations.

Those bipartisan efforts respected and honored the memories of the four brave Americans who were killed in Benghazi: Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods, and Glen Doherty.

The problem is that Speaker Boehner did not like the answers he got from those investigations. So he set up this new Select Committee — with no rules, no deadline, and an unlimited budget — and he set it loose on Secretary Clinton because she is running for president…

As we all know, Rep. Kevin McCarthy — Speaker Boehner’s second-in-command and the Chairman’s close friend — admitted that they established the Select Committee to drive down Secretary Clinton’s poll numbers.

Republican Congressman Richard Hanna said the Select Committee was “designed” to go after Secretary Clinton.

And one of the Chairman’s own investigators—a conservative Republican—charged that he was fired in part for not going along with these plans to “hyper focus on Hillary Clinton.”

These stark admissions reflect exactly what we have seen inside the Select Committee for the past year. Just look at the facts.

Since January, Republicans have canceled every single hearing on our schedule for the entire year — except for this one with Secretary Clinton.

They also canceled numerous interviews that they had planned with Defense Department and CIA officials.

Instead of doing what they said they were going to do, Republicans zeroed in on Secretary Clinton, her speechwriters, her IT staffers, and her campaign officials. This is what Republicans did — not Democrats…

Carly Fiorina has said that Secretary Clinton “has blood on her hands,” Mike Huckabee accused her of “ignoring the warning calls from dying Americans in Benghazi,” Senator Rand Paul said “Benghazi was a 3:00 a.m. phone call that she never picked up,” and Senator Lindsay Graham tweeted, “Where the hell were you on the night of the Benghazi attack?”

Everyone on this panel knows these accusations are baseless — from our own investigation and all those before it. Yet Republican Members of this Select Committee remain silent.

On Monday, the Democrats issued a report showing that none of the 54 witnesses the Committee interviewed substantiated these wild Republican claims. Secretary Clinton did not order the military to stand down, and she neither approved nor denied requests for additional security…

[If you enjoyed that, check out the video of Cummings and Republican Trey Gowdy go at one another this morning over the recent questioning of Clinton friend Sidney Blumenthal.]

In a sane world, it never would have come to this. Someone inside Republican party leadership would have stepped up right at the outset and stopped this from happening. But all that mattered back in 2012 was weakening Obama, and all that matters now, it would seem, is keeping Clinton from the White House. And anyone inside the Republican party who wasn’t in lockstep agreement on this was driven out. And, as a result, this little lie has been allowed to fester and eat away at the foundation of our democracy. The Republicans not only stood by while Clinton was accused of murder, and while fake photos of a tortured Chris Stevens spread like wildfire across the internet, but they encouraged it. And, in doing so, they did irreparable harm. They allowed this cancer to spread in hopes that it would serve their political interests, and the financial interests of those individuals who fund their campaigns, without any concern for the truth, our nation, or the four men who died in Benghazi. And, as a result, we’ve all suffered.

I’d like to think that, perhaps, we’re collectively coming to our senses now. I’d like to think that all of the people behind these multiple Benghazi hearings will now be driven from office by voters who have finally come to realize that they’d been manipulated. I don’t think that’s going to happen, though. Regardless of the facts, which are finally being discussed in a substantive way, there are a good number of people out there who will always believe that Clinton and Obama gave orders that resulted in the deaths of these four Americans… ignoring not only the fact that no wrongdoing has been found, but that more deadly embassy attacks had taken place under Bush, and that, in spite of this fact, Republicans had voted to cut embassy security. But maybe enough people will come to their senses that, even if we can’t right the wrongs of the past, we can at least move on to something of real substance. [At some point you have to stop burning witches and actually do the hard work of governing.]

Here, for what it’s worth, are the first few words I wrote on the subject of Benghazi back on November 16, 2012.

(T)he Republicans, in the wake of last week’s crushing defeat at the polls, are desperately looking for something to cling to. They’re looking for an opportunity to delay introspection, come across to the American people once again as forceful, and, most importantly, weaken the President as he attempts to make the case that wealthy Americans need to give up the irresponsible tax cuts that were given to them by Bush. And, the only thing they have to work with, it would seem, is the consulate attack in Benghazi, Libya, in which four Americans died…

[If you’re interested, you can read the entire post: “The manufactured Republican outrage over the attack of our consulate in Benghazi is not only disingenuous but morally reprehensible.”]

Part of me wonders how it is that we could possibly still be talking about this after three years, when the truth was right in front of us the whole time. Then I remember that the Republicans, at least for the past decade, haven’t really have a platform of their own… They don’t have a solution for health care. They don’t have a solution for the Middle East. They don’t have a solution for poverty… All they’ve really got, other than a desire to cut taxes and kill the EPA, is the suspicion that Obama was born in Kenya, the desire to build a wall around our country, and these four dead men in Benghazi.

Posted in Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged 2016, 9/11, Benghazi, Carly Fiorina, Chris Stevens, Clinton Foundation, Congressional hearings, dirty political tricks, electoral politics, Elijah Cummings, Glen Doherty, Hillary Clinton, House of Representatives, House Select Committee on Benghazi, John Boehner, Kevin McCarthy, Libya, Mike Huckabee, political theater, Rand Paul, Richard Hanna, Sean Smith, Sidney Blumenthal, Trey Gowdy, Tyrone Woods | 50 Comments

What could possibly be going on in the women’s bathroom at my office?

By Mark | October 20, 2015

Posted in Mark's Life | Tagged bathrooms, events transpiring in bathrooms, video, video surveillance, women's restroom | 10 Comments

Totally Quotable Arlo: giant ground sloth edition

By Mark | October 20, 2015

Arlo is at a pretty good age right now. He’s still a little kid, but his mind is starting to work in a more interesting way. His play is more imaginative. He’s talking to himself more. He’s making more interesting connections. Every day, he says something that strikes me as interesting. For the most part, I’ve stopped jotting down the things that he tells me. Tonight, though, when he crawled up next to me with his giant ground sloth, and told me his name, I felt as though I should probably document it. The following is a direct quote from Arlo.

I love the name Doctor Squirrel Pants. It brings to mind a settler on the American frontier… a self-taught doctor, rugged and shirtless, wearing pants made of squirrel pelts.

[If you’ve got a few extra minutes, be sure to check out our Totally Quotable Arlo archive.]