We picked Kerry last time because, well, he was a war hero, and he was the realistic choice. He didn't do that well, wouldn't you say? Why do we forever speculate as to who "would get the hardest treatment" from the right? They all will. The first act after the primaries are decided will be to get people to think, "drug-taking Muslim surrender monkey" every time they see Obama. Hillary will be "controlling bitch who wants to take your firstborn for the socialist work camps she has in mind." Each will concentrate on destroying the strengths of the candidate, and they don't much care about truth. End of story. The rest is spin, the imposition of my projection of what I want to happen on what might happen. You don't know any of that. What we do know is, they'll be coming after our nominee. You can set your watch to it. Now, pick the candidate who most embodies our principles, and when he or she IS attacked, because they will be, fight as hard as you can. End of story.

People "know" that their candidate will do best in the upcoming campaing, and then imagine things to show them in that light.

The other thing every pundit does is ascribe motives to the candidate they don't like. Hillary cries? She's deliberately flaunting her femininity. She laughs? Penn must have worked that out with her. Besides, it's a cackle. She kisses a baby? She's pandering to the mother vote.

And that would be Hillary.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/healthcare-numbers/

Google is an open company that has built its dominance on brain power. It surpassed Yahoo rather quickly, because its algorithms are infinitely superior. Google had the plain search box page, and Yahoo had the ridiculously junky main page designed by somebody in Finance. It didn't make up for the weaknesses of the directory metaphor, or the ugly and stupid maps.

Compare acquisitions. Google buys a mapping program, and then there's Google Earth, and Google maps, and Google APIs so anybody can use the map as part of their program or website. Eventually, Yahoo comes out with a very respectable map, but it's late, and they're behind. Microsoft brings out a whiz-bang, almost photorealistic map, but you need Direct X and IE and all the Microsoft crap to run it. That's what it always is: to snooker people into using the Microsoft Way. And meanwhile, Google is on to the next play.

Will this acquisition mean real gains for MS? Depends. If they just wipe out and rebrand Yahoo, no. It will mean less choice. If they leave Yahoo alone? Well, they've been shrinking and losing money. Is that a good idea? Do they add to the programming geniuses with Microsoft guys? Add MSN guys to the roster, so that the same geniuses who got MS its even lower market share than the already struggling Yahoo can run the joint? Dubious.

I think the honest truth is, Microsoft built its OS for the desktop. They saw the Internet and tried to make a monopoly grab for that. Can't do it. They did their best to use the dominance of their OS to push their browser on everybody. They dreamed up the hotmail wallet, etc. It all made sense in some kind of way, but only the Microsoft dweebs would have stuck to MSN when Google came along.

Go to MSNBC. Meditate that, for five years or so, they programmed their video so that it would only work with Windows. Even when they were using software that existed on the Mac, with codecs that exist on the Mac, they used javascript in such a way so that Mac users would get a helpful message directing them to download Windows XP and IE 6. What did they get out of that?

CNN, meanwhile, made its player cross-platform. Works on the Mac, Windows and I'd bet Linux, right? Finally, years later, they have a beta that plays on my Mac. What took them so long? I don't think they 'get' the Internet at all. They're always trying to brand it, the Microsoft Internet. Even the hugest of large cap companies should know that you can't do that. The Internet is all about standards that anybody can adopt. Every bit they try to dominate it, they diminish it and make people choose other things.

How come his health care proposals blow so hard?

And take a look at the actual accomplishments of JFK, not the way he made us "feel." What were they? They Bay of Pigs? Vietnam? Operation Mongoose? Emboldening Khruschev to think he was a patsy, so he put those missiles in Cuba? Hmm. We took a risk, and it was scary. Eisenhower had navigated us through a similar risky patch, and we lived through it with the steady hand of the former head of SHAEF. LBJ beat the hell out of Goldwater, and then jammed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, and Medicare, through Congress. LBJ wasn't an agent of change? Sure, there was Vietnam, and the apologists have been very resourceful to imply that Kennedy would have done differently -- after he had secretly given Ike's advisers a military role, and okayed the murder of Diem -- but the evidence is slim. No president wanted to be the first to preside over the US losing our first war. Sure, I loved the guy, but the New Frontier and Camelot were Hollywood slogans. People expected FDR to come back, but JFK was no FDR.