Mark Knows It All

PLEASE VISIT MARK KNOWS IT ALL, THE WEB SITE One of the problems I am having with this year’s presidential campaign is the media’s refusal to properly do its job and vet Barack Obama. They aren’t doing the American public any favors by treating him as Christ’s Second Coming; and ironically, they are not doing Senator Obama any favors either. He now runs the risk of being blindsided as the traditional media has left the job to bloggers and talk radio hosts and people like me who often don’t get the facts right…well, I do. I can guarantee you that the Republican Party, John McCain, and Hillary Clinton have done their homework, and issues will arise causing Obama’s usual “how dare you ask me those things” smarmy attitude to finally fail him. There are two areas that can be fatal to his campaign. Here is the first. Over the course of his campaign, Senator Obama has raised in excess of a quarter billion dollars (that’s with a “B”). He has set all sorts of records, and the media has gloated...

Please Visit: Mark Knows It All, the Web Site This past week I have had to deal with a series of deaths of family members, clients, and family of friends. It began with my uncle, who went in for heart bypass surgery and never regained consciousness. Louie was a sweet, gentle man who was always front and center to help anyone in need, never lost his temper, and always was ready to forgive the frailties of those around him. Although he and his wife never had children of their own, they were blessed with a host of nieces and nephews who stood by, ready to help in any capacity they were able. Although Louie was 80 years old and led a full life, his death was untimely as he never exhibited any symptoms other than some mild chest discomfort, and we just weren’t ready for him to go. He will be missed. Next to go was Fran, my 96 year client, who isolated herself from not only her family, but the world in general. She was a corker, feisty to the end. In one way, it was sad. On the other hand, ...

Please Visit: Mark Knows It All, the Website The Democratic Party, over the past several years, has done a good job in teaching me about acceptable standards of behavior in two important areas. 1) I have learned that the standard of acceptable sexual behavior by which our public officials should be measured is oral sex performed in the oval office by the President with a 21 year old intern. That is what I had to teach my 12 year old son as we learned about Bill Clinton’s indiscretions every morning on the Today Show as we drank our juice and coffee. If a public official’s behavior is anything less than that, hey…its OK!!!!! 2) I have learned that the acceptable level of racism and hate speech has been defined by Jeremiah Wright, as originally sloughed off by his congregant, Barack Obama. As a garlic nose Italian who apparently is responsible for killing Jesus, and a member of the KKK of America who believes in white supremacy and supports a government who invented aids to kill the bla...

Don't forget to check out: Mark Knows It All, The Website I was watching the news the other night and was shocked to see that we are having a rice crisis. How could that be? What will happen to my pork fried rice at the Main Moon Chinese Takeout? Apparently warehouse stores, such as Costco and Sam’s Club, in California and New Jersey have limited the amount of rice that can be purchased at one time. I’ve listened to several explanations as to how and why this happened. It had something to do with a crop failure in Asia, the falling dollar, Vietnam, ethanol, rising oil prices, and of course, global warming…always global warming. I don’t know what to lose sleep over first. There is the sub-prime mortgage crisis, the housing crisis, the education crisis, the gas price crisis, the climate crisis, the imported drugs crisis, the imported toys crisis, the NAFTA crisis. It’s enough to make me long for the 1970’s. All we had back then was a meat crisis and toilet paper crisis. Those were e...

DON'T FORGET TO VISIT: MARK KNOWS IT ALL: THE WEBSITE Before there was My Big Fat Greek Wedding , there was Zorba, The Greek , one of my favorite movies. Where is your madness? It’s four in the morning, and my insomnia wins out again as I turn on the television to see what early morning viewing could be had. Sandwiched between an informercial for hair replacement, and an infomercial for hair removal, there was Zorba, dancing on the beach on AMC. I was 14 when the Michael Cacoyannis cinematic masterpiece came onto the scene. My first impression of the movie was its wonderful music. My folks thought the movie was too racy for me to see (it was 1964 and Bambi was considered "morally objectionable"), but they bought the soundtrack and played it over and over again. When I finally saw the movie a year or two after its release, it was fun to see what went with the music that was so indelibly burned into my brain. It was filmed in black and white, which made it kind of artsy. T...

MAKE SURE TO VISIT: MARK KNOWS IT ALL; THE WEB SITE I have written numerous times about the vast wasteland of television. 250 channels and nothing to watch unless you are a Law and Order fan, followed by any of the CSI series: New York, Las Vegas, or Miami. Sometimes in desperation I watch Home Shopping. Colleen Lopez is easy to look at, and can sell a snowball to an Eskimo. Joan Rivers or Suzanne Sommers shows up from time to time to hock their jewelry, and both of them need to sell what they can before HSN or QVC goes to High Definition. If that is how they look in analog, I hate to think about how much additional makeup they will need for digital. Even for a news junkie like me, even I occasionally have to turn off the talking heads and seek refuge. Because food is one of my great passions, I often times turn to the Food Network. When I was small, my experience with cooking shows was Kitchen Corner with Marjorie Mariner. I can still see the salad tossing intro and hear the tatatatat...

Please visit: Mark Knows It All, the Web Site There is an order in life. The sun comes up in the morning and the moon comes out at night. Christmas comes in the winter and Easter in the spring…and so on. These are things on which you can count. It gives one constancy. Several weeks ago, my secure world was disrupted. Armstrong Cable changed my cable line up. What happened to Channel 62? Whenever I travel, I am always glad to get home to my own cable company’s channel lineup. Armstrong Cable has always had a certain symmetry to it channels. This divinely inspired natural order was probably created on the sixth day. After all, God rested on the 7th, and probably wanted to watch some television. So…NBC, CBS, and ABC were on Cable 2, 4 and 7. CNN was on cable 3. HBO was always on cable 5. Cable 6 was always some stupid station like Disney or something else. Channel 8 was ESPN. As Armstrong added stations, it followed a natural progression. USA, Nickelodeon, and TNT were next on the lineup...

Make sure to visit: Mark Knows It All; the Web Site This is Easter weekend. I struggled for a long time to find a way to present my feelings, in the context of Holy Week, about the Barack Obama/Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy that has dominated the news. So I pulled Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" Speech, given at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, and actually read the thing. What a powerful testament to a vision of America for all of us. I challenge you to read this speech, and not have tears in your eyes at the end. Rev. Wright and Senator Obama, this is the hope and the promise of America. "…..It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a...

Don't forget to visit: MARK KNOWS IT ALL, THE WEB SITE; www.markknowsitall.com I keep telling my wife that there is a whole world out there we know nothing about…and I found part of that world last weekend. After two days of winter weather, Sunday broke forth glorious full of sunshine. The day started normal enough. I went to church, sang in the choir, went out for breakfast, you know…Mark things. Then my son suggested that we should do a father and son thing…”Let’s go to the gun show!!” Gun show? As in bang, bang? The last time I shot a gun was at Camp Fitch in 1958. I scared myself, missed the target and wet my pants. They gave me a merit badge if I promised to stay off the shooting range and direct my skills towards the art and crafts tent. I still have the hammered ashtray, as well as my virginal, “no-holes in it” shooting bulls-eye…so they could show my parents that they tried....

Be sure to visit: Mark Knows It All: The Web Site: www.markknowsitall.com Once upon a time I had a very close friend who was an Episcopal priest. He and I were alike in many ways, and in many ways we were different. Over the years, we shared many experiences in each other’s lives. Then things became strained, and then the relationship stopped altogether as we developed a different view of the world and said some things to each other we shouldn’t have. Sometimes things can't be taken back. But I did learn one important lesson from him. He attended seminary at a place called Nashotah House in Nashotah, Wisconsin. He often spoke fondly of it, and how happy he would be to move back there permanently. I always thought that was a bit strange because it was frickin’ Wisconsin. Lots of snow and lots of cold. Why would anyone want to live there? But over the years I heard him not only talk about the peace of the place, but live the peace in his life. Some of my fondest memories of my fr...

Don't forget to visit http://www.markknowsitall.com/ Hope: to have a wish to get or do something or for something to happen or be true. Aspiration : a desire or ambition to achieve something. As the 2008 presidential campaign heats up, Barack Obama is in full gear selling his vision for the future of America. He is for “hope” and “change.” …and oh yes, peace. He is also for “peace.” Aren’t we all? Obama, the oratorical wunderkind with the speech cadence of Martin Luther King, is doing a fine job of telling us what we should hope for, and how he is going to give it to us. He is a riveting individual and a spell binding speech giver. Hope is a good thing, right? Obama believes Americans are “hope” deficient. Americans “hope” for universal (read “government run”) health care, even though 85% of Americans have coverage, and 25% of those who do not aren't American citizens, and an additional 14% of those who don’t can afford it but simply choose not buy it, and a portion of the re...

VISIT: MARK KNOWS IT ALL: THE WEBSITE At what age do we become irrelevant? My conclusion is the older we get, the earlier that age becomes, and it is disheartening. When I was young, I was taught to treat folks who are older than me with a degree of respect. I still do to this day. Even though I am 58 years old, I still refer to people whom I have known since I was small as Mr. or Mrs. Whoever, simply because their age carries with it something of merit. They grew up in difficult times. Now the Baby Boomers, the largest and wealthiest segment of the population, are on the downhill side of middle age. By definition, we are aged between 50 and 65. But rather than enjoying any kind of respect, the digital age quickly moved us into the age of irrelevance vis-a-vis a younger group of people who not only have no regard for us, but have no regard for each other. Such are the egocentric twenty year olds, who have redefined the word "entitlement." These are the people raised on comput...

The Westminster Kennel Club show is over, and Uno, the Beagle, was the winner. Clearly THE popular choice, he is now enjoying a blast of media hype, eating steak off a table at Sardi’s, and relegating Snoopy, the former most famous American beagle, into second place. Style is everything, and Uno has style. While style and breeding are de rigueur in dog shows, it also seems to be de rigueur in this year’s Democratic primary. What do we do with Obama? He is now the front runner in the Democratic presidential primary, blowing past a shrill and teary-eyed Hillary, who would have done well to heed the advice of the 1950’s hit “Cross Over the Bridge”, by leaving her “fickle past” behind her…and dumping that two timing, philandering husband of hers. We all love Bill, but methinks he done her in. Which leaves us with Barack. Let me start by saying I like this guy. He is the most refreshing politician to come down the pike since Ronald Reagan. When he says he wants “change”, I believe him. He g...

While talking to my son the other night, I heard a strange rumble followed by him reaching for his cell phone. I then proceeded to watch him methodically and with much dexterity rapidly push a bunch of buttons using both thumbs. “What are you doing?” I asked. “Texting.” He said. “Wouldn’t it be easier just talk to the person on the phone?” I queried. “No!” he replied, and continued to text away. I have often questioned whether cell phones represent an advancement in telecommunications, or whether it is actually a step backward. Here is a gizmo that I have carry around in a case on my belt. The reception is usually pretty awful when I use it. It can do many things, but my fingers are too fat to push the buttons. I have to recharge the battery every night. And between my phone, my wife’s, my son’s, and my mother’s, I pay a lot of money to buy “minutes” which I may or may not use. On the other hand, there is my land line phone at home and the office. Locally, I can talk as long as I want ...

This morning Fox News reported a story concerning three lawmakers in the great State of Mississippi attempting to pass legislation that would ban restaurants from serving obese people. As I understand the legislation, it would use the body mass index (BMI) to measure who could be served and who would be turned away. The story also reported that using the standards in the proposed Mississippi legislation, Tom Brady and Eli Manning would both flunk the test, and go away hungry. I also would flunk the test, but I am definitely in the obese category. For those of you new to my ranting, I have written several times over the past two and half years about freedom loss creep. It comes in baby steps, as we grow accustomed to a new governmental intrusions in our lives. And it is usually veiled in something that sounds perfectly logical at the time. On a panel subsequently discussing the Mississippi food police story, the commentators made it clear that the law has no chance of passing. The healt...

I have learned over my life that people connect at many different levels. We have family connections and business connections. There are connections based in attending the same school or working in the same office or living in the same neighborhood. But every now and then, a special connection comes along based on something that defies the normal course of things. Over the course of my choral music experience, I have made two such connections. Carol Cook died today. She was a friend, although I didn’t know too much about her personal life. I knew she has some children and grandchildren. I knew she knitted (Canfield Fair blue ribbon winner) and bowled. I knew she was feisty, and said her mind as she believed necessary. But I only knew about those things in generalities. I was never to her house. I never went out with her socially. I didn’t know her other friends. But for many years, Carol and I sang in the Zion Lutheran Church choir, and later the Seraphim Chorus. She was an alto and I ...

Heath Ledger died this past week. My wife and I were watching election coverage when the news flashed across the screen. All of a sudden the news cycle was taken over by this untimely passing, with reporters standing in front of his Soho apartment in New York City, doctors speculating how this 28 year old man could have died, pictures of the body bag being removed from the apartment as a makeshift memorial was being set up at the front door, and lurid descriptions of pills being scattered around his naked body sprawled across his bed when discovered by his masseuse. After awhile, my wife looked over at me and asked:”Who’s that?” Then my mother called me and asked me the same question. At my church choir practice, another lady asked me the same thing. This was the second young actor to die this past week, 23 year old Brad Renfro being the first. Although not as “famous” as Heath Ledger, he also got substantial press coverage on his untimely demise by a drug overdose. When the televisio...

Katie, bar the door and hide the women. Here comes Wal-Mart. Sam Walton’s corporate tribute to mass merchandising, economies of scale, and the largest importer of goods into the United States, is coming to Canfield, Ohio…or not. In what appears to be one of the worst corporate real estate development decisions in modern times, Wal-Mart has decided to build one of its “Super Centers” on one of the busiest, most dangerous roads in Ohio, the State Route 224 Mahoning County corridor. It would face I-76, the Ohio Turnpike, for “exposure”. One small problem, there is no turnpike exit within 10 miles either way for anyone desiring to get to the store. State Route 11 would give it the closest freeway access, but traffic makes it almost inaccessible now, and any more construction would completely gridlock it from 3 -5 in the afternoon when it takes almost 30 minutes to drive less than a mile to the freeway. Not only is the location convoluted, they want to build it 6 miles from the newly expand...

Henry Clay and the Compromise of 1850 One of the side stories of this year’s election is whether or not New York Mayor Bloomberg will run for president as a third party candidate. His mantra is an end to "partisan politics." He envisions a Congress in which both sides of the aisle are working together, Republicans and Democrats holding hands, solving the nation’s problems while singing Kum By Yah. Sounds good, but is it? For your consideration, I believe that our political process needs, and we as citizens of a democracy deserve, a vigorous discussion of the various sides of an issue. Sometimes there is simply no room to compromise, nor would you want one. The old joke that goes Q: “What is a camel?” A: “A horse designed by a committee”, is a perfect example of what a compromise can spawn. When you need a horse, a camel don’t cut it no matter how admirable a beast it might be. Many of the great philosophical issues that face this nation are not amenable to compromise. Eithe...

The real winner this past Thursday was Iowa and its caucuses. Maybe it was the uniqueness of the current presidential election cycle; or perhaps the excitement of the possible first woman or black presidential nominee; or the lack of a clear front runner in a crowded GOP race; or the fact that my son decided to visit Iowa to see the caucuses first hand (he took the above picture in Des Moines)....whatever it was, this was American politics at its best. People never really understood how the "caucuses" worked, but the proliferation of digital cameras and videos has finally shown how this quirky institution operates from the inside. People showing up for a meeting of about 1 1/2 hours in length, listening to speeches, being cajoled by fellow citizens to vote for whomever, then physically going to a corner of the room to deomstrate a candidate preference. It was fascinating viewing. I wish we had such a system here in Ohio. Iowa serves several functions in our electoral process:...