Mark Knows It All

I watched the Emmy Awards on Sunday night. Other than the Tony's, I am not an award show fan. But I wanted to see Ellen DeGeneres, who now that she has gotten over her "coming out" issues, is one of my favorite television personalities. (I really like her American Express commercials. She has me dancing in the elevators!!!) Unfortunately, most of these types of shows have taken on a political tone which takes the fun out of them. Case in point, Miss America was "politically corrected" to death. At the end of the day, I really don't care if Miss Arkansas has 3 graduate degrees and spent 5 years in Africa. I just want to see some "T and A". The network did try to suppress the political harrangs that have become common place in Hollywood award shows as of late. (Didn't Marlon Brando send some Indian, excuse me, Native American, chick, I mean lady, to accept his Academy Award years ago?) To some extent, the network succeeded this year. But what was...

When I brought my wife to Youngstown for the first time in 1971, the first place I showed her was the Brier Hill Route 422 corridor, and the drive along the Mahoning River through Youngstown, Campbell and Struthers. US Steel, Republic Steel, Youngstown Sheet and Tube and Commercial Shearing were among the largest of the companies. Medium size companies such as Aeroquip and Wean United were sprinkled in for good measure. One could look right into the blast furnaces from the Center Street Bridge, and the fire would light the night sky. Then came September 17, 1977, better known as Black Monday, Lykes-Youngstown, the old Sheet and Tube, announced it was closing its Youngstown operations. 25,000 jobs were lost. Mill after mill after mill followed. Company after company closed. When it was said and done, the primary job loss estimates reached upward to 75,0000. 24 blast furnaces were located in the Mahoning and Shenango Valleys in 1968. There are none today. In the carnage, people lost ever...

How much does America expect from its government? Apparently a lot. In the coverage of Katrina, it has been comical to watch the various media outlets querying whether FEMA could have done more, or did Governor Blanco freeze, and of course, the whole thing is the fault of George Bush. The truth is that the blame for the hurricane rests squarely on the shoulders of Mother Nature. The breach in the levees is just one more in a long series of man-made follies trying to defeat her....and failing. We live in a world of instant gratification and solutions. Two hundred and fifty five cable television channels blaring 24/7 have taught us that most problems can be solved in an hour, with the more serious problems taking the length of a mini-series. We have totally lost our ability to be awed by forces larger than ourselves. That is, of course, what has made America great. No job is too big. No work is too hard. There is no task that can't be accomplished. We demand perfection in all our ins...

There isn't anyone in the entire country who could have watched the suffering along the gulf coast without wondering why our government didn't respond sooner than it did. The good news is that once it responded, it did so magnificently. The bad news is that people died during the 24 hour delay. There is plenty of blame to go around between the Democrat Mayor of New Orleans, a total zero; the Democrat Governor of Louisiana, clueless; and Republican George Bush, who, for reasons known only to him and God, flew to California for a fund raiser and speech on Iraq while New Orleans drowned. Much has been written about the failure of the government to build the levees so that they could have withstood the storm. In the blame game, that discussion will probably not be as intense as the one surrounding the 24 hour delay, but will figure prominently in the debate over how to rebuild New Orleans. Adjectives I have heard on the issue so far are short sightedness, cheapness, pork spending, ...

Driving home from work tonight, I was stopped at a traffic light waiting to make a left turn. The left arrow from the cross street was green, so I decided to count the number of cars turning left in front of me while I was waiting for the light, and to count how many people driving the cars were on cell phones. I counted 11 cars. 6 of the drivers of those cars were on cell phones.That made my cell phone experience driving home today more exasperating as at least two cars cut into my lane while the drivers were on cell phones. And at least one car had traffic backed up in the left lane of the main drag while he dialed his cell phone, and dialed, and dialed. At the restaurant tonight, a lady was on her phone while waiting for a table as her 5 kids ran wild around her. At least I know that there were 5 times she wasn't on the cell phone, or maybe she was. One never knows. She was on the phone as she walked to her table. She was on the phone when her husband put in his appearance. She ...

I am tired of learning new things, and it is getting scarier by the day. I remember a time when I wanted to listen to music, I would either turn the knob on the radio or put a record on the phonograph. You could even listen to several records by stacking them on the spindle and they would drop down when the previous record was over. Now THAT was technology. I remember when my son was younger, his friends visited our house. They were just amazed as to how that worked. They stood and watched it over and over and over again. And laughed at me over and over and over again. On television last night, they told me that if I want to listen to music in the future, I am going to have to download the music to my MP3 player off my broadband connection and subscription music service, plug the player into my computer, plug something called a router into my computer, plug a comparable router into my stereo receiver, turn on the stereo receiver and tell the computer what songs to play from the MP3 pla...

I can give many reasons why we need to police ourselves better. At the top of the list is the jerk who ran the red light at the Route 224-Tippecanoe Road intersection, making a left turn, as I proceeded into the intersection in the opposite direction. I duly noted the name of the company on the side of the truck, owned by a friend of mine, and will make appropriate telephone calls tomorrow. It was some kid driving the truck while jabbering on his cell phone. It was close. In tonight's paper, however, it was reported that Mayor Melfi of Girard and his city council, in a 4-3 vote, are moving forward with its plans to put cameras on the streets to monitor speed. The fine for going over 25 mph in Girard: $170.00. Really makes you want to go to Girard, huh? I wonder how long the citizens of Girard will tolerate the demands of having to drive perfect 24/7 before they get tired of what is nothing more than a tax on themselves. Let's face it. How many people actually drive 25 mph throu...

The local news reported last night that an electronic law enforcement equipment company made presentations about its latest "gotcha" camera for monitoring your behavior. This gizmo is a traffic control radar device that can monitor 3 lanes of traffic simultaneously, take pictures, and then issue appropriate citations and fines to speeders and do the collection to boot. All of this is done at "no expense" to the governing authority. One can assume that the company is paid by either keeping all of the fine or a percentage thereof. The selling point is that this "frees" law enforcement officials to do serious police work. In our area, local news is reporting that Youngstown, Warren, and of course, Girard, are considering this system. The Ohio State Legislature has a different view of things, and has recently passed legislation that would make it illegal to operate a "red light running camera" without the presence of a law enforcement officer on the ...

I am one of the few people who think Richard Nixon was a good president. He ended Lyndon Johnson's war, ended the draft, improved relations with Russia, and opened the door to China. Many of today's environmental programs are directly descended from the Nixon Administration. He presided over a country filled with upheaval and social change and provided visible stability through scary times. After thirty years, however, it has become clear that his presidency marked the beginning of the end of any degree of civility in the American political process. I suspect that history will show that Watergate is certainly not a high watermark in our political process. But it will also show that Nixon probably didn't do anything more or anything less good or bad than any of his predecessors. Nixon's biggest mistake was to underestimate the righteous indignation of a left leaning press that exercised a virtual monopoly over the sources of information of the American people. Cloaked in...