Mark Knows It All

Hold onto your hats. Here is Mark’s Fearless Year In Advance Presidential Election Pick. Every four years I get an adrenaline rush as I anticipate the Olympics and the Presidential election. And this year, it comes early, as each of the states cuts in front of the other to sanctify its influence in the choice of candidates. Make sure you vote before going to Midnight Mass. The media is attempting to make the primaries a horse race, but I think most of the horses are trotting to the glue factory. Hillary is making the Dems and the main stream media orgasmic as they anticipate a woman nominee; qualifications be damned. She is a one term Senator from New York whose claim to fame as First Lady is that bureaucratic abomination called Hillary Care. The rest of the time she was putting out Bimbo eruptions at the same rate as the firefighters are putting out fires in Southern California. On the “R” side, is Guiliani. Because of this blog, I actually had to learn how to spell his name. If you w

From the category of “be careful what you ask for 'cause you might get it", comes the story out of the Portland, Maine, whose school system is now dispensing birth control pills to eleven year olds without parental permission or notification. Maine law prohibits the school system from advising parents that their children are having sex, even if it is a felony not to report it the authorities....you figure it out. The only option available to the parents is opt out of the school health care system altogether. So if little Mary is injured, the school won't assist her. On its face, this is the single, dumbest, most irresponsible thing I have ever seen to come out of a school system....EVER. But it needs to put it context of several other stories that have been in the news as of late. On the one hand, you have the school dispensing birth control to 6th graders, which facilitates sexual activity. On the other hand, you have the school system in McMinnville, Oregon, which filed

Have you noticed, lately, how hard it is to have fun? Whether going out to dinner on Saturday night or taking a two week trip, everything is sooo hard. My wife and I still enjoy going on vacations, but only to a degree. As a very tired wise man once said: “I can either go on vacation, or get ready to go on vacation. I don’t have the strength to do both.” Airport hassles, flight delays and cancellations are modern day travel nightmares. In Arizona, the TSA is now experimenting with a new x-ray machine that twirls you around while they look at your altogether, and I mean your altogether, in another room. Add packing at the front end of the trip and car rental hassles at the other, you need to rest up for a week after you get to where you are going. Then it is time to do it all again going home. I don’t like having to work so hard to have fun. Driving to a destination is even worse. Construction and dodging orange barrels is now permanent no matter what time of year. Freeways have been bu

Every now and then I come across an editorial that can say it better than me. This speaks for itself. Good for Mr. Barone. (No. He is not related to Ray Barone) This is reprinted from the October 8, 2007, Real Clear Politics Web Site. You can reach it by the Links section of this blog. Ivory Tower Decay By Michael Barone I am old enough to remember when America's colleges and universities seemed to be the most open-minded and intellectually rigorous institutions in our society. Today, something very much like the opposite is true: America's colleges and universities have become, and have been for some decades, the most closed-minded and intellectually dishonest institutions in our society. Colleges and universities today almost universally have speech codes, which prohibit speech deemed hurtful by others, particularly those who are deemed to be minorities (including women, who are a majority on most campuses these days). They are enforced unequally, so that no one gets p

Whenever you hear a government program glowingly described as “for the children,” hit the dirt and hold onto your wallet. Using kids as pawns is a tried and true political gimmick. You can hide all sorts of government “sneaky sneaky” under the guise of “we have to do it for the children”. SCHIP is the latest example of feeding misinformation to the American public by the do-gooders of this country, those who know what is best for you. SCHIP, the federally mandated State Children’s Health Insurance Program, is a truly needed and valiant effort on the part of Congress to provide health insurance to the kids of what are described as the nation’s working poor. Enacted in 1997, it was directed at those families who made too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but whose income was as such that it would put an “undue” financial burden on the family to purchase health insurance privately if not provided by an employer. As originally designed, it covered those families whose income was under 20