Mark Knows It All

It has been a long campaign. Even for a politically active person like me it has been a campaign way too long. Then again, it has been a long four years. Each election cycle I marvel at the intelligence of the American public, and sometime its ignorance. This year my faith has been restored. It has been a different kind of campaign. Conservative and center right moderates acted on their own motion. For three and half years there was no center to rally around…no standard bearer of leader. Yet Americans by the millions acted on their own sense of what it means to be an American forming Tea Parties and Pacs and ad hoc groups operating independently of each other yet all working towards a common goal: American Restoration. While Obama and the Dems tried to fracture America, pitting poor against rich, black against white, young against old, and Hispanic against “white” Hispanic, men against women, a funny thing happened on the way to those faux pillars. American conservatives came to...

I have always been political. I remember seeing John Kennedy when he came to Youngstown. I was ten. His motorcade went through Canfield. He was riding in an open convertible shaking the hands of people who went right up to the car. As he drove by me I grabbed his thumb…and wouldn’t let go. My mother started to scream. I could see the headlines now: Ten Year Old Pulls Candidate Out of Car. My conservative ilk started in 1964 when Barry Goldwater was running against Lyndon Johnson. By then I was 14, having political discussions at holiday dinners with my fascist Italian uncle. But he was a businessman who started with nothing, sold take-out spaghetti dinners door to door for his friend Chef Buardi (Boy-yar-dee) in Cleveland, and over the years became a major importer of Italian Romano cheese. At any rate, I read two books: Conscience of a Liberal by Hubert Humphrey and Conscience of a Conservative by Barry Goldwater.  I concluded Goldwater was right, no pun intended, an...

        It’s time for my annual Christmas rant. For several weeks, QVC and Home Shopping Network have been doing their early Christmas thing. I am even getting emails asking me to start celebrating early. Several television networks are already advertising their “Countdown to Christmas” movie fests beginning in November. All of this started the last week of September. Give me a break. I know times are difficult. The retail business has been, let’s say, less than stellar. But Geez Louise, the Halloween stuff has just been put on the shelves. Can’t they wait until after the candy corn pumpkins go on sale? All we need is Kraynak’s to start advertising their Christmas Tree Lane…and my October will be complete!!! And don’t forget somewhere in the mix between Halloween and the Christmas season is Thanksgiving…where we are thankful…for the Macy’s parade and football? The fact of the matter is we continue to degrade the Christmas holiday. In A Char...