Mark Knows It All

 I was surprised to hear that Pope Benedict decided to throw in the towel and retire to a convent on the Vatican grounds. Good for him. It’s about time someone had the good sense to realize that it probably takes a younger guy to lead a billion and half Roman Catholics. Of course, when it comes to Popes, young is a relative term. There are only two criteria. You have to be breathing…and you need a healthy prostate. When you are up up on that altar in St. Peter’s and you gotta go…there is no place to go. There is no “excuse me I will be right back.” Kyrie Eleison takes on new meaning. I have always found pope transitions interesting. Pope John XXIII was elected as an interim pope after the death of Pope Pius XII (who was pope WAY too long), and changed the entire religion. He moved the church into the 19th Century. Pope Paul VI was boring. Then there was John Paul I. They picked the wrong pope and it gave birth to the Godfather 3 movie.  We needed a Polish...

   I'll be honest.   Turning 63 last month was a sobering experience.   I have had several of "difficult" birthdays over the years, and not necessarily traditional age landmarks.   I handled 50 just fine.   49 was another matter.   I handled 60 okay.   63 was a bit much.   I have joked about senior night at the Perkins.   We go every Tuesday.   I attended an event at the symphony over Valentine's day.   It was a wonderful event but the crowd was "older" which made me feel uncomfortable.   The State of Ohio is pushing legislation requiring financial advisors to report suspected "elder" abuse for clients, financial or otherwise, over the age of 60.   Sixty...really?   I have always made fun of mall walkers as I have walked at the mall myself feeling smug that I am not one of them.   Last time I walked I realized that I am one of them.   Which leads me to the mall walk...

This past week has proven nothing more than how fragile our lives are. We all like to think we are in charge. Think again. Forces around us, man or nature made, call the shots. Whether it is God or life forces or Karma or the river of life, we are at the mercy of events; not the other way around. So you’re driving down the street in Chelyabinsk, Russia, when a streak flashes across the sky followed by a blinding flash of light followed by an explosion that shatter glass all over the city causing injuries to over a thousand people. Was it North Korea? Was it Iran? Was it Obama’s latest kill the bad guys drone? No…it was a ten ton meteorite that exploded in the sky then landed in a frozen lake outside the city limits. Meteorites seem to have an affinity for Mother Russia, the last one landing there in 1908 wiping out about 1000 square miles of Russian wilderness. We in North America are not immune either. The one that landed in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico did nothing more ...

A close and dear friend of mine who does not share my political views asked me the other day about the background of the hosts of Fox and Friends, FNC's morning show entry. I responded that their names were Steve Doocy, Brian Kilmeade, and Gretchen Carlson whose backgrounds were weather guy, sports guy, and former Miss America respectively. Sounds pretty unimpressive, doesn't it? That started me to thinking. Just what are the backgrounds of many of the reporters who are our nation’s gatekeepers to information and interpretation? What separates these “journalists” from you or me? Is there anything in their backgrounds that makes them smarter than you and me?  Does a degree in Journalism give them some special insight...some education specialty?  I concluded what these folks don't know is a lot.  Yet we grant them the status of opinion maker.   Let’s start with the Fox and Friends hosts. Steve Doocy was born in Iowa and rai...

Have you noticed that people as of late have become mean? This is more than usual testiness. This is mean stuff. What makes it even more disturbing is folks seem to be enjoying it. I belong to a lot of organizations, and I can personally tell you it’s a jungle out there. What is even more disturbing is folks are overtly telling you how mean they are. I can’t believe some of the stuff I have heard over the past few months. I am a lawyer, and it is mean people that fuels our business. That being said mean people, at least in my experience, have always been the exception rather than the rule. I am not so sure anymore. Whether it is in an organization or a church or a club or in the office or driving a car or going to the theater, there seems to be anger just below the surface that is bubbling up more and more. People are always going to disagree. This is more than being disagreeable. This is nasty business where there is shouting and pounding and deliberate deception and delibe...

CHASING WINDMILLS On a recent day shopping trip to Cleveland my wife and I came across one of those humongous electric generating windmills. It is located in Bainbridge and is clearly visible on the high school property as one drives along Route 422…the back way to Cleveland!! We decided to investigate. Of course it would be located on school grounds. Windmills are politically correct and make a statement saying the school board is being green with somebody else’s money. We have seen them from a distance many times, but now we could get up close and personal. These things are huge and somewhat scary. This one is located almost on top of the school parking lot and it looks like the blades could swoop down and lift you up…and they are VERY, VERY, VERY noisy. There is some creaking and groaning, but mostly there is a deep roaring sound that almost sounds like an airplane engine. I feel sorry for the folks that live around there. To make matters worse, although they look lovely and gr...

Liberal media just doesn’t get it. Along the fringes of the news this weekend are numerous reports of layoffs at the New York Times. These aren’t the grunts…these folks are senior staff including the Times Washington editor, its food editor, and the former New York Time Magazine editor. The cuts will number up to 30 top newsroom positions either through buyouts or layoffs. Newspapers generally have a problem with the modern day information age. Free information is everywhere. Long gone are the days of newspapers publishing “extras” to inform the public of breaking news. All one does today is turn on television or click onto the internet. Anything and everything one needs to know is at our fingertips. On the other hand, that doesn’t negate the need for reporting. There is a place for newspapers in our society. Unfortunately for the elite media mavens, the need is for good reporting. Historically the New York Times has been the national newspaper of record. Those in the acad...

Let me understand this. AlGore goes into business with Joel Hyatt (of Hyatt Legal Services fame) and starts a liberal television network, never mind Hyatt is a stellar conservative, with AlGore owning 20%. Current TV was carried on most large cable networks reaching 60 million households in the United States although nobody watched it being underwhelmed by its progressive message. That tends to be a problem when trying to make money. One of Current’s intended targets was the liberal audience at CNN, which nobody watches either. But I digress. Over the past several months AlGore had been quietly lobbying the cable companies to continue their relationship with Current TV because something was going to happen. Bingo!! It was announced today that AlGore and his associates sold Current to Al Jazeera, the Qatar state owned Arab network which served as the mouthpiece for Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda after 9/11. To this day it continues on a semi-regular basis anti-American rants a...

If you are looking for warm and fuzzy…you ain’t gonna find it here. Keep–a-goin’. This is about a phenomenon that is becoming less and less unusual…longevity. I don’t have any statistics, but anecdotally it appears to me that folks are living longer and longer. And that is causing some real problem on all sorts of different levels be it Social Security, Medicaid, long term care. The list goes on and on. My wife and I have had that kind of longevity in both of our families. My mother died three years ago this January at the age of 89. I have an uncle and aunt who are pushing 100. My wife’s mother lived to be 84 and died this past September. The usual response is “isn’t that wonderful he/she/they led such a long life!” Well…maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. If the family is functional long life is a good thing. If it is dysfunctional, that is another story. Both of our mothers were difficult people, and I mean that in the worst possible way. While on the surface things seemed al...

I have been writing Mark Knows It All for eight years making this my eighth Christmas Card.   Each year I begin to look for things that could be the topic of my year's favorite essay.   Over the years I have found Christmas in a mad dash for cookies, or in a little girl who was physically challenged going down the steps after a Christmas show, or on a drive to Sharon midst a spectacular full moon and beautiful decorations.    This has been a difficult year.    It has been filled with friends and family passing expectedly or unexpectedly.   There has been family turmoil rising up when we weren't paying attention.    People have been on edge.   Everybody seems to be angry.   Then there was that shooting thing in Connecticut just days before Christmas taking the lives of 28 people, twenty of whom were innocents.   As horrific as the Newtown massacre was, it pales in comparison to the violence on the streets of Chicago a...

Okay….all of you do-gooders who want to wash yourselves in the Christmas spirit are going to have to wait until next week. This week, I am the Grinch…the Scrooge….the curmudgeon who is ready to take this holiday and shove it up someone’s ho ho ho. Generally I am a good natured person (Alright…who snickered?). But this year I have had it up to my chinny chin chin with people who always have their hand out. How much is enough? The begging for the “needy” is non-stop. From food banks to the local charities to collections in churches to collections in grocery stores to the cashier who asks do you want to donate a dollar to help blankity blank to my Continuing Legal Education seminars where the Ohio Supreme Court says we need to do more pro-bono work. Hell, half the work I do is pro-bono. I don’t need some smug judges who don’t have to pay for their CLE hours because they are “public servants” telling me to do more work for nothing. I am at the end. If things have gotten...

Are you tired of snotty kids? I know I am. No, not the crumb grinding infant set. That’s another story. I’m talking about the sniveling 16 – 26 year olds that don’t have the common sense to come in out of the rain….and yet….they act like they have the wisdom of the ages locked in their puny little brains. In reality, they know jack. Take away their hand held and I doubt if they could add two plus two and come up with four!!! I was channel surfing the other night and came across Reba McIntyre’s new program Malibu something or other. Reba is the hapless parent surrounded by two teen age brats who are endowed with unending wisdom, and her former pot head mother played by Lily Tomlin who knows the answer to life resides somewhere between marijuana and LSD. Never mind that it’s Reba who has to pay the bills and hold everything together. She’s just a schmuck, a poor working schmuck. In many ways this show is emblematic about our society today. Those who are working and trying to m...

                               For some light reading these past few weeks, I decided to read a book called The Grey Wolf. For those non-historians among you, and I am sure they are plenty, that was the nick name for Adolf Hitler. The book’s premise it wasn't Hitler who died in that bunker in April of 1945…it was his double. Hitler, Eva Braun, and Blondie the wonder dog escaped to Argentina, a favorite haven for Nazis on the lam.  It explores in detail the relationship between the demise of Nazi Germany and the rise of Juan and Eva Peron (Evita). It's argument is simple. The story goes Eva Braun poisoned herself and Hitler blew his brains out. The bodies were then brought out of the bunker and burned to a crisp. Bones were recovered from the site, but none belonging to Hitler or his wife. So what happened to them? Simon Dunstan and ...

When the train is coming down the track , there is no way to stop it . Get out of the way. And that’s exactly what happened last Tuesday night. To all of my Republican friends, all I can say is I’m sorry . After we retreat into our pensive selves to figure things out, I will guarantee you the sun will come out tomorrow . So now it’s time for the post mortem. I am reviewing the situation , to analyze what happened. As I sit at the bar, there’s a tear in my beer watching out the window at sundown . How could I figure I was winning when I was losing again!!! But all things must pass . Obama did a little sidestep right back into the White House. He had more money , and he knew how to use it.  Those guys from Chicago, Illinois, are tough. There’s always next year, and maybe this time I’ll win. God Bless America.     (There's a Tear in my Beer...really?)

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...

As we go through the 2012 election cycle, the behavior of the press has been disturbing. What we are seeing is the death of journalism and an even stronger alliance among those in the media and the Progressive political movement in the United States. There is continual questionable journalism surrounding hard news stories in an effort to shelter the media's candidate, Barack Obama, from any political fallout. It’s tough for Americans to make decisions about who best to deal with serious issues if the media simply refuses to report what those issues are. Here is what the media is not reporting. On the economic front, which is the least of our worries notwithstanding how bad things are, durable goods orders are down 13.2%, the lowest January, 2009, and previous months’ figures are being revised downward. The economy in China is slowing down. And more importantly, the turmoil in Europe, the largest economy in the world when taken collectively, is pushin...